Fifteen years ago, airlines were demonstrating their very latest integration success with passengers’ personal electronic devices: the eXport socket for inflight entertainment systems that could connect to the consumer iPhone 3GS or iPod Classic via the 30-pin dock connector and a $40 cable (about $60 adjusted for inflation) in order to play MP3s ripped from the CDs in their home collection or movies in the 480×320 resolution specific to the iPhone 3GS.
Very little of that last sentence will be understandable to a reader who didn’t live through those times, not least because just as the aviation industry started to roll out eXport-enabled seats that had taken half a decade to certify and produce, Apple replaced the 30-pin connector with Lightning. Much as hotels’ docking speaker systems became useless in a couple of years, so did the eXports — many of which are still flying today.
Of course, airlines and their suppliers learned lessons from eXport. USB sockets began to be installed as separate faceplate-socket and backend-powered elements, enabling not just quick-change maintenance, but also technology upgrades, such as from the original rectangular USB-A outlets to the USB-C sockets more prevalent over the last half-decade or so.
Fundamentally, the eXport story is one of consumer technology lifecycles outpacing the lifecycles of aviation, including for regulatory approval reasons. This is not a uniquely aviation problem — witness regular car rental customers who travel with an otherwise never-used USB-C to -A cable for when they get a rental car that still has a USB-A socket for charging and to connect to CarPlay or Android Auto.
But nor is eXport the only example, though — your author has in his airline image library a glossy PR snap of a passenger plugging their digital camera’s red-yellow-white RCA connector cables into the IFE to leaf through holiday snaps. This, too, did not achieve widespread adoption, for reasons of ease-of-use and since the prospect of enabling passengers to display certain content on IFE screens was rather a question of doing something because one could rather than because one should.
The eXport, a Panasonic Avionics innovation, is still flying on aircraft today. Image: John Walton
Since then, though, airlines and suppliers have been cautious about jumping on new consumer trends. Bluetooth headphone connections, credit card swipes, app-based IFE content playlists, HDMI sockets, embedded tablets, NFC readers… not all have been as successful as others.
Enter wireless charging in the mid 2010s as an option for business class seats, generally embedded as part of the side table console created by the overlapping tessellation of herringbone or staggered seats. As a consumer comparison, the first iPhone with wireless charging was the iPhone 8, using the Qi wireless standard from the Wireless Power Consortium.
Wireless charging has been on the way to the aircraft for over a decade. Now it’s onboard, though, is it actually useful? Image: John Walton
These have now been rolling out for the last few years, after a variety of announcements in the late 2010s. RGN believes that the JetBlue Mint Suite was the first to actually fly in 2021, but welcomes corrections on this score. But here’s the rub: much as with USB power, wireless charging is accelerating substantially on the consumer side, faster than aviation can keep up, and without visibility for the passenger. Moreover, they are largely installed embedded in the side console, meaning the entire part must be removed to upgrade between versions to enable faster charging — for versions where in the last ten years the maximum power has increased by 600 percent.
Does it really make sense to have to remove and potentially replace this entire console in order to repair or update the wireless charging underneath this embossed charging point? Image: John Walton
Early versions of the Qi standard limited charging to 5W, then 15W, then 30W, and the newest standard also includes the magnetic-snapping MagSafe-style connection that Apple popularised. The problem for passengers — and therefore airlines — is that there’s no way to know how fast a seat’s wireless charger will charge their phone, if at all. Will it get 5W? 30W? Will it max out at 20W, as the rumours for the 2024 iPhone suggest?
Ten years ago in 2014, your author saw little attention being paid to onboard USB sockets not performing up to the needs of current devices. Discussing charging with suppliers two years later the discussion had already occurred and moved on.
To date, your author has never been able to usefully charge a smartphone with onboard wireless charging, even on the newest seats — and even when removing it from the case to avoid any interference. Either the power supplied has not been able even to maintain a charge, or the power is so limited as to charge so slowly that it is invisible, or it has not recognised the presence of the phone, or the fractionally small distance between charging and not charging was too little to avoid an unnoticed movement to stop charging. And, of course, one cannot meaningfully use a device while it is horizontally charging on a side table.
Vertical, size-limited wireless charging is an interesting choice, precluding uses for anything that doesn’t fit in — such as tablets, earbud charging cases, or any differently-shaped future technology. Image: John Walton
To date, wireless charging is not something on which one can rely to charge one’s device on the plane. If that doesn’t change, will it go the way of the eXport — and should airlines instead use the limited onboard power supplies for something that works better, is more widely used, and is more upgradeable?
Related Articles:
- Panasonic tackles charging anxiety with its own USB-C for Astrova IFE
- Safran’s first Unity: a strong experience in JAL A350 business
- In-seat power leaders on the extended transition to USB-C
- Astronics reveals dock style wireless charging in tray table
Featured image credited to John Walton
