Offering inflight broadband service
Most aeronautical and technological innovations in airplanes initially involve a guy like Dave Cummings in the cockpit, testing out new equipment under various conditions.
Well, maybe not exactly like Cummings, a former bush pilot in Alaska who told me he had been through a couple of dozen cockpit fires and other adventures in severe conditions.
These days, Cummings has a less buccaneering job as a pilot of a big-bellied flying boat — a restored 1951 twin-engine Grumman Albatross amphibious plane that serves as an aerial laboratory for Row 44, the California company that provides in-flight broadband service through satellite technology. Right now, Row 44 is best known for its introduction of broadband Wi-Fi connectivity on Southwest Airlines’ fleet of about 540 Boeing 737s.
Last week, while attending the Global Travel and Tourism Summit convention in Las Vegas, I played hooky one day and took an hourlong test flight on the Grumman plane, named the Albatross One. These big Grumman flying boats were developed mainly for military search-and-rescue missions after World War II, and this one also did some astronaut training duty with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Breathtaking
I was braced against the wind as the Albatross dropped from the sky, splashed down in Lake Mead and then, propellers bellowing, took off again to thunder along the cliff-hugged narrows at 10 feet above the beautiful green Colorado River. Then we swooped into the sky for a breathtaking climb above Hoover Dam.
Hey, is my job crazy, or what? But the serious business at hand on the plane was routine testing of Row 44’s complex satellite system. While few of us will need Wi-Fi while barreling down a canyon, those conditions rigorously test the precision positioning required by a seamless worldwide satellite-based Wi-Fi network.
Besides running calibrations on the satellite technologies, the plane is also used to demonstrate Row 44’s products to prospective clients. This is where Lefkowitz comes in, with his long background in Hollywood, television and live entertainment, including a stint at the Home Shopping Network.
The basic Row 44 product is broadband in-flight Wi-Fi, a market now dominated by Aircell, whose Gogo system is installed on more than 1,100 aircraft in the US, belonging to nine airlines. Gogo’s technology is limited, though, because it is based on ground antennas.
Row 44, whose other major client is Norwegian Air, says its satellite networks provide “limitless bandwidth capacity.”
That’s where the market innovation lies, Lefkowitz said, especially as airlines realise that a growing number of customers are now bringing their own Wi-Fi hardware onto flights.
Lefkowitz says he thinks that airlines, eager for new revenue, will sign onto a new ‘private labelled portal,’ the details of which Row 44 will soon announce. It’s what the techies call a ‘walled garden,’ branded and designed by Row 44 for a particular airline. It will offer live interactive concierge and retail services, including destination-specific reservations for hotels, restaurants and shows.
Now, the last time I met Lefkowitz, he was running Vegas.com, an online concierge service that calls itself the largest single provider of bookings for entertainment, restaurants, tours, golfing tee times and other travel services in Las Vegas.
I asked Lefkowitz how he proposed to replicate the Vegas.com experience for Row 44, for airline destinations around the world. “Well, you travel a lot for starters,” Lefkowitz said as Albatross One banked over the desert for a landing. “Last week, I was in Madrid, Majorca, Hamburg, London and New York. In 36 hours.”
