Panasonic Avionics enhances Arc 3D inflight map platformRunway Girl

Panasonic Avionics in 2019 debuted its powerful Arc 3D interactive map platform for inflight entertainment, injecting competition into a landscape once dominated by Collins Aerospace’s Airshow inflight map and later overtaken by the popular FlightPath3D solution in commercial aviation.

But until recently, Panasonic has kept its Arc customer numbers close to its vest. In a statement released during the MRO Europe convention in London, the inflight entertainment and connectivity giant revealed that Arc has been selected by “35 of the world’s leading airlines for over 1,000 aircraft and is already in service across multiple fleets and geographies.”

That’s not entirely surprising to your author. Earlier this year, on a British Airways 787-9 flight from Washington Dulles to London Heathrow, my seatmate spent the entirety of the flight watching the Arc map on his seatback IFE screen. And a few months later, on an Aer Lingus A321XLR flight from Dulles to Dublin, I too found myself in pinch-and-zoom mode, exploring Ireland’s terrain, learning new facts and trivia about Dublin and other cities around the world, and tapping into a simulated pilot’s head-up display.

Built by Tactel, the Malmö, Sweden-based digital interaction agency that Panasonic acquired a decade ago, Arc uses millions of images from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites as baseline and adds custom-built 3D graphics and gaming engines to deliver an immersive experience to passengers.

But the Tactel team is always innovating and regularly releases new Arc features. For example, Panasonic in March announced it would integrate Stockholm, Sweden-based Flightradar24’s live airline fleet data into Arc. Now, it has rolled out customizable Airline Route Maps which showcase an operator’s global networks. In time, airlines could even highlight the live fleet data of their alliance partners, management told RGN during a sit-down interview at Tactel’s offices in Malmö.

Part of a tranche of new Arc upgrades, Panasonic has also enhanced the map’s story-telling ability with Arc Vistas, bringing cinematic fly-through visuals to the map.

Importantly, Arc now offers improved accessibility with the addition of text scaling and color adjustments that “ensure readability for passengers with visual impairments and improve visibility for colorblind or low-vision users,” Panasonic said.

And new integration APIs enable airlines and third-party developers to bring Arc map data and visuals to other passenger touchpoints, including airline apps and portals. Panasonic previously told RGN it was open to offering Arc on rival seatback IFE systems.

Panasonic’s decision to buy Tactel a decade ago was intentional, as management understood that digital was on the march, and software differentiation meant it would be able to activate new experiences at speed for its airline partners and their passengers. An award-winning UX firm, Tactel boasts a strong Nordic presence, and works across industries — from mobile banking and transit to streaming companies and security firms.

Industry cross-pollination

“The thing that happened at Panasonic Avionics, which I was really happy to be part of, was the realization that we had to really internalize this talent, that if digital is really going to define things and it is considered an essential win factor in at least half of our wins out there,” then it doesn’t make sense to change too much, Panasonic Avionics vice president of digital solutions Andrew Mohr told RGN in Malmö.

“It’s a big mistake of large companies to get an entity like Tactel and then just absorb it and… destroy the uniqueness,” he continued. So, the Tactel team has been encouraged to continue to pursue work in the Nordics “because it really provides diversity of different verticals.”

This, in turn, brings fresh ideas into the inflight entertainment and connectivity realm. “It’s a sort of virtuous loop,” noted Mohr. “And sometimes it’s the other way around. But what we really look for is the Nordic side is great at recruiting. [There’s] a lot of really well-known Nordic brands. So that helps them acquire the talent and then keep it.”

When the Tactel team meets with an airline for the first time, it wants to both inform the carrier about what’s presently happening on the digital front and what can be done in the next couple of years “based on what we see in other industries because it’s going to come to the airline industry sooner or later,” Tactel CEO Jonas Hasselgren explained to RGN.

“We have a lot of material to spark discussions. Then we also have a a vision template that we use. So it’s pretty important for us, if we’re going to work with an airline, to understand what they’re thinking, what they want to continue doing, what they want to stop doing within the cabin, and if there is something extra they want to use the IFE for to drive their business forward. And based on those discussions, we can create concepts of things — that could be new applications or new ways of using the IFE as a communication tool, how the IFE can support their crew and their marketing.”

Because Tactel keeps its finger on the pulse of digital innovation across industries, it has practically become the default design studio for some of Panasonic’s big airline customers. Some, in fact, have migrated to Tactel for virtually everything, including UX, e-commerce, advertising integration, and interactive design and publishing, the latter facilitated by Panasonic’s new Modular Interactive tool which enables airlines to take full control of their digital experience with a high degree of customization.

Having a compelling 3D map at the heart of these digital solutions is smart. “After new Hollywood releases, the map is usually the most viewed IFE service on an aircraft, “Mohr noted.

Little wonder, then, why Arc is being constantly enhanced, and why new map functionality is on the horizon to increase airlines’ ancillary revenues and drive further passenger engagement.