Sometimes, airframers make exceptional arrangements for exceptional customers, including in support of their inflight connectivity plans. And so we turn to Airbus, which has brokered a special arrangement to help facilitate Delta’s IFC vision for bringing Hughes Fusion to 20 on-order A350-1000s — and has separately entered talks on accommodating Amazon Leo installs.

Delta is a prominent customer of Hughes Network Systems’ hybrid multi-orbit, multi-network, multi-beam, multi-band Hughes Fusion IFC solution, which pairs a Ka-band multi-orbit capable ThinKom Solutions Ka2517 VICTS antenna with a Ku-band Hughes-made electronically steerable antenna (ESA) to, respectively, talk to geostationary (GEO) satcom and Eutelsat OneWeb’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) service.

Meeting Delta’s needs

While Airbus does not formally offer Hughes Fusion as buyer-furnished equipment (BFE) or supplier-furnished equipment (SFE), it does provide the Ka2517 portion of Fusion to airlines as part of its linefit, SFE-based HBCplus IFC program (the Ka2517 kit is now called HBCplus flex). As such, Airbus is able to support factory-fit Ka2517 installs on Delta’s A350-1000s, leveraging HBCplus.

“Airbus will work with Delta and Hughes to equip Delta’s A350-1000s with the multi-orbit inflight connectivity solution, co-developed by Delta and Hughes, and using Airbus’ HBCplus as the foundation for the aircraft integration,” Airbus said in a statement published during the Aircraft Interiors Expo (AIX) in Hamburg.

Calling Delta the “first North American customer of its linefit offering,” Airbus vowed to “support Delta in the post-delivery modifications” of the LEO-only ESA “to complement the linefit installation” of the Ka2517-based HBCplus flex.

Following Airbus’ press conference at AIX — during which the European airframer made a bevy of IFC revelations including announcing a forthcoming new HBCplus modular ESA terminal to support multi-orbit, multi-network, multi-band, multi-beam IFC via NGSO networks — RGN sat down with Airbus VP, head of connected aircraft program Tim Sommer to learn more about this special Delta arrangement.

“Delta is going to work with STC providers to add the LEO” portion of Hughes Fusion “and we are going to support, let’s say, the aircraft integration part of that from a design point of view,” Sommer explained.

Delta is certainly appreciative, with company director – cabin programmes Joseph Eddy saying in a statement: “Leveraging Airbus’ industry leading systems integration and engineering capabilities, to integrate our Hughes’ multi-orbit IFC solution, is a natural partnership that is already bringing real value to our delivery streams.”

If other Airbus customers want to broker a similar arrangement with Airbus to bring Hughes Fusion to new-delivery twinjets, will the airframer facilitate them, we asked?

“It would be a case-by-case discussion,” Sommer replied, noting that “it’s not part of our normal offer, but let’s see… We try to be flexible also in working with customers on today and tomorrow.”

Prepping for Amazon Leo

While the Delta arrangement is indeed “about our current HBCplus product,” based on the Ka2517 terminal and is about “helping them getting that integrated with the Fusion part,” it is also about the potential for both parties to work together on future IFC projects, Sommer said.

To wit, as Delta prepares to bring Amazon’s Ka-band LEO satellite-powered Amazon Leo service to 500-plus aircraft, Airbus is looking at how it can support the airline from a linefit perspective.

Like Hughes, Amazon is a Ka-band managed service provider (MSP) on the HBCplus program. But Amazon favors an ESA-based architecture for its LEO-specific service. And so, on the heels of Delta’s announcement that it’s “going to go big time with Amazon Leo,” Sommer confided that the carrier’s Amazon Leo deal is a “high area of interest” including to discuss in the context of Airbus’ newly-announced ESA-based HBCplus modular product.

“We are in the early stage of that,” Sommer said of the talks. “That’s the opportunity now to work with big partners like Delta to make sure that that product is actually something which is also suiting their needs.”

Indeed, Amazon will be the first MSP on the program to use HBCplus modular, in what is expected to be a Ka LEO-only configuration, Sommer said

HBCplus modular ticks the boxes that Sommer said Airbus wanted to tick when it shared details about its early work last year with RGN. Notably, it ensures that Airbus is able to facilitate the Ku-band segment (for which it boasts multiple MSP partners, including SES-formerly-Intelsat and Panasonic Avionics), and it accommodates new NGSO constellations “independently of Ka or Ku, as soon as they are available.” It also comes at a time when SES and Panasonic have revealed plans to ultimately offer MEO/LEO and LEO/LEO IFC offerings, respectively.

As its name suggests, HBCplus modular is based on a modular design. Expected to debut in 2028, the package can accommodate up to two antennas, in Ku or Ka, and connect to multiple satellite systems, giving airlines the flexibility to take a multi-network approach.

In keeping with the core value proposition of the HBCplus model, operators can also swap out their vendors with other partners on the program, if they see fit. Airbus reckons a vendor update could be accommodated with “an overnight retrofit.”

Sommer told RGN that HBCplus customers do need to select a single MSP provider, even if they adopt disparate networks.

So, purely for example, if an airline wants SES MEO-supported IFC and wants to pair it with Amazon Leo service, would it select SES as the MSP and tack on Amazon Leo or select Amazon as MSP and tack on SES MEO, RGN asked?

“In that case, we would facilitate a discussion between SES and Amazon to see who makes that solution as the integrator/MSP/service provider perspective available because in the end you need to have an SLA for the service part,” Sommer said.

We would be providing the technical solution; we would be selling the system basically and in our system indeed that is one of the possibilities you will, in the future, be able to have: a combination of Ka MEO and Ku LEO networks. But somebody needs to take, and that might potentially be SES or it might be somebody else, needs to take the role of the service provider in that case.

Today, there is no service provider offering yet a combination of SES MEO and an Amazon Leo, but there are very serious discussions of course of people in the industry trying to combine these kinds of capabilities. And you’ve seen two examples of that already: one is, for example, SES making available the OneWeb network as a service provider. Panasonic is as well using the OneWeb network.

The other example is Hughes working with Telesat and making Telesat available on our current HBCplus flex product and that would be typical examples of where you use basically different networks and different service providers but under the umbrella of one MSP.

Sommer’s confirmation that Hughes is working with Telesat to bring Telesat’s Lightspeed LEO service to the current Ka2517-based HBCplus flex product is quite interesting. Might Delta opt to add Lightspeed LEO to its multi-network mix via Fusion? After all, it could ferry Ka-band GEO and Lightspeed LEO service over the Ka2517 terminal and Ku-band OneWeb LEO over the Hughes ESA.

Time will tell.

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