Inmarsat, Cobham Evaluate Flight Deck Connectivity with United Airlines

Boeing 767-400ER flight deck. Photo: Wikimedia.

Inmarsat and Cobham Satcom announced that United Airlines will participate in a technology evaluation of SwiftBroadband-Safety, Inmarsat’s next-generation flight deck communications platform.

Inmarsat will evaluate the platform on four United Airlines’ Boeing 767 aircraft, which will be installed with Cobham’s Aviator 300D satcom system. Enabling communications with real-time inflight information, the service enhances airline safety, asset utilization, security, and operations, Cobham stated.

During this evaluation, United Airlines will deploy its equipped planes in the highly congested North Atlantic airspace. It will use the new platform for communications and surveillance with Controller-Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC) and Automatic Dependent Surveillance Contract (ADS-C) messaging.

SwiftBroadband-Safety also provides a range of what it calls “always on, always secure” applications, which United Airlines will be able to use. These include continual positional awareness for flight tracking, flight data streaming (known as Black Box in the Cloud) and real-time Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) applications, such as networked graphical weather. Operational benefits include more fuel-efficient routes and the ability to transmit vital aircraft performance and positioning data in real time.

Installations of the Aviator 300D systems on United Airlines’ planes are scheduled to commence later this year.