Global digital advertising spend in 2020 reached US$332 billion and was set to overtake traditional, non-digital ad spend for the first time. With this in mind, it may come as a surprise that in-flight digital advertising is far from lucrative. Glass half empty With fill rates currently hovering around just 30% for video adverts and…
As an extension to our IFEC data intelligence services, we are pleased to reveal details of enhancements to our quarterly in-flight entertainment and in-flight connectivity trackers. Background In 2016, to supplement our in-depth annual deep dive into the in-flight connectivity (IFC) market, Valour Consultancy launched a quarterly tracker product designed to keep those with a…
Many reading this will be well aware of how important the North America region has been in the context of IFC. Carriers in the region were amongst the early adopters of IFC, globally, aided by the launch of Gogo’s Air-to-Ground network, which at one point served more than 2,600 aircraft. In true chicken and egg…
Air travel has been massively impacted and disrupted in the past six months. Until Covid-19 hit, the biggest challenge facing airport operators and airlines was how to cope with an ever-increasing demand for air travel and the limited infrastructure to support it. Now, they are scrambling for survival as the industry has been turned on…
One of the first questions we were asked once the enormity of the COVID-19 situation became apparent was its likely impact on the in-flight entertainment (IFE) industry. Indeed, one of the messages we received from a well-respected name in the industry back in March was that he suspected “traditional IFE would not bounce back”. At…
A new report predicts strong take-up of in-flight connectivity (IFC) systems on business aircraft over the next ten years. According to Valour Consultancy, an award-winning provider of market intelligence services, the number of IFC terminals installed on business jets will rise to almost 32,000 in 2029 – up from 20,689 at the end of 2019.…
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Defence Agency (EDA) have funded two consecutive projects called DeSIRE, in 2013, and DeSIRE II (Demonstration of Satellites enabling the Insertion of RPAS in Europe), in 2015, to examine how drones might operate within controlled airspace when controlled by satellites for commercial and governmental applications. To undertake…
“I don’t see how he can ever finish, if he doesn’t begin.” Alice thought to herself that unmanned traffic management should be easy, so she checked several countries that are beginning and this is what she found. In the Asia/Pacific region, there is practical experimentation but a willingness to standardise, Russia is ploughing its own…
As I continue to work on our 2020 update of Valour’s “The Future of In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) Content” report, a number of interesting themes are emerging in the context of what will drive a recovery and, subsequently, the future growth of this sector. I’ll save most of the findings for the report itself, but I…
In previous blogs and in several of our reports, we’ve covered the “three C’s of in-flight connectivity” (which should really be four when you consider the costs involved). Latency is another important, but often overlooked, part of the business aviation connectivity experience and is defined as the total time it takes a data packet to…
On March 27th 2020, London-based satellite firm, OneWeb filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States, and in doing so surprised some and merely confirmed what others had seen coming for some time. Much has been written, both pre- and post-bankruptcy, around the challenges associated with making the LEO business model work and,…
At this point, the assumption is that readers are fully aware of the context surrounding COVID-19, both in terms of cause, spread and implications, globally. Rather than focus on repeating what is already known, let us instead jump straight into reviewing the effects of this pandemic on the In-Flight Connectivity (IFC) competitive environment. What will…