Mexico’s low-cost airline Viva has selected SES to provide multi-orbit connectivity to 100 Airbus aircraft under a deal announced Monday.
SES will equip 60 Airbus 320s and 40 Airbus 321s with its electronically steered array (ESA) in-flight connectivity (IFC) solution. The service has already been activated on 11 aircraft, a spokesperson for SES confirmed Monday.
Viva will be the first Mexico-based airline to offer SES’s ESA service. The IFC service uses the Sidewinder ESA antenna, built by Gilat Satellite Networks. It connects to both SES’s Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellites and OneWeb Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites from partner Eutelsat.
“Connectivity today is not a luxury – it’s part of how people live, work, and travel. Our goal is to make flying fit seamlessly into our passengers’ digital lives, instead of forcing them to disconnect. With this service, being in the air no longer means being offline,” said Pablo Gómez Gallardo, chief digital officer at Viva.
This is SES’s second recent deal in Latin America for the ESA solution after an agreement with Abra Group in December for more than 100 aircraft.
