Connectivity for aircraft started with hand signals from one Wright brother to the other. One hundred years ago, in 1917, AT&T manufactured the first American air-to-ground radio capable of transmitting voice. Europe had Ma Bell beat by two years, having equipped some observation aircraft with Marconi two-way voice radios, during the second year of World War I. Air-to-ground Morse code communication was available as early as 1912—less than 10 years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight of a manned aircraft. And even today, pilots learn the codes air traffic tower controllers use for light signals in the event of radio failure.

The information superhighway that has transformed ground-based communications has been at least a few steps behind in its leap to airborne connectivity. But passengers’ lust for carrying on their cyber-connected lives aloft has driven hardware and software developers to deliver ever wider pipelines to onboard Wi-Fi platforms.

Honeywell calls its program “Connected Aircraft,” and the most recent advances have brought living room- or office-level performance to aircraft connectivity. AIN participated in a demonstration flight of the company’s Boeing 757 test bed, with one editor focused on passenger-centric issues (see story on this page), and another focused on pilot and operational utility. Honeywell director of flight services Kiah Erlich provided details in the preflight briefing, and enroute during the one-hour demonstration flight.

The JetWave hardware system feeds its GX Aviation (airline) and JetConnex (business aviation) cabin Wi-Fi programs, delivering up to 35 megabits per second (Mbps) of data transfer speed (largely dependent on antenna size—business jets typically can achieve around 15 Mbps). That’s sufficient to enable the most data-rich activity, including video streaming and all levels of social media connectivity.

While passenger convenience has been the driving force, the knock-on effect for aircraft operators (airlines and business aircraft) has been no less significant. It’s just not as obvious to the general public.

Honeywell divides its list of stakeholders for advanced connectivity into five camps: passengers, pilots, maintenance personnel, flight operations managers and CEOs. Passengers enjoy the same Wi-Fi performance they’re used to on the ground—for better or worse (there is no longer any “escape” from connectivity—even at 41,000 feet). The rest of the stakeholders use the increased bandwidth to do their jobs more safely and efficiently, and the potential benefits are profound.

Honeywell groups its operations apps as its GoDirect family of services, and they include the Portal (manages the network); Access (controls access to the network); Filter (controls streaming costs on high-speed datalinks); Network App Control (links devices and services in both the cabin and cockpit); Toolkit (simplifies satcom troubleshooting); Flight Tracking (real-time position tracking worldwide); Weather Prepare (for flight-planning weather considerations); Flight Planning (a comprehensive global flight planning app); Aircraft Datalink Travel (ensures safety services and cockpit communications are secure and robust).

The GoDirect Flight Bag Pro app provides all the benefits of a tablet-based electronic flight bag, but optimized for Honeywell avionics and JetWave hardware. While secure cockpit connectivity is tightly controlled for security through the existing ACARS network (which has much less bandwidth than JetWave), Honeywell optimizes the ACARS datastream by consolidating data for greater efficiency, and at least some of the data-transfer chores are being offloaded to the much more capable JetWave network—JetConnex in business aircraft and GX Aviation for airlines. Issues of legality in deciding what the high-speed network can be used for are being worked out with varying regulatory agencies around the world, said Honeywell.

Among the benefits of enhanced connectivity is weather information in the cockpit. While in-cockpit weather data links have been available for some time, Honeywell’s GoDirect apps have even more information and in closer to real-time in capability. This enables pilots to more readily adjust flight plans to avoid weather—including clear air turbulence (CAT) as predicted by increasingly sophisticated algorithms. As more information on air temperature and moisture content becomes available (in part, from crowd-sourcing data from aircraft in flight), the accuracy of predicting CAT is improving. That’s how Honeywell presents its Connected Aircraft as a means of improving passenger comfort.

Other benefits of GoDirect connectivity include fuel optimization. According to Honeywell, trials with an unnamed European airline have shown an average per-flight savings of 500 kg (1,102 pounds/164 gallons) of fuel.

Honeywell showed its Flight Preview app during the demonstration, and AIN was able to download the app on an iPad (using the on-board Wi-Fi) and try it out. The app enables pilots to preview specific approaches to unfamiliar airports, with a split-screen display showing the approach plate on one side, and an animated view of the approach path overlaid on Google Earth imagery on the other. It shows how the approach will unfold, with a synthetic-vision-like view of the surrounding terrain and obstacles. Erlich said the app is most helpful for pilots gaining situational awareness before flying to challenging airports, such as Aspen-Pitkin County in Colorado.

Another time and money saver for connected aircraft is on the maintenance side. Predicting required maintenance issues can allow airlines and corporate flight operations to have parts and mechanics waiting at destination airports, rather than having to wait until landing to start the process. Erlich mentioned a feature of the app that enables pilots to take a picture of their aircraft’s brakes with their mobile phones and send the photo to the maintenance department. The app is able to analyze the photo and predict when the brakes will need to be serviced. Similarly, data streamed from aircraft engines, avionics and other systems can optimize maintenance planning, and even predict system failures before they occur.

To bring perspective to the potential impact of connected aircraft, Honeywell posted some statistics at the beginning of its presentation. According to the company, delays cost the aviation industry a total of $25 billion annually. A grounded aircraft costs as much as $10,000 an hour.

In contrast to previous generations of airlines, Honeywell pointed out that an Airbus A380 has 25,000 onboard sensors delivering as much as 844 terabytes of data in 12 hours flying time. The company predicts that 25,000 aircraft will have Wi-Fi connectivity by 2025.

Finally, Honeywell pegs the Connected Aircraft as a $7 billion business.

Honeywell estimates Connected Aircraft could ultimately save 5 percent in fuel costs; result 35 percent fewer operational disruptions; and cut maintenance troubleshooting time by 25 percent.