Inflight Dublin, a leading IFE provider, has launched Everhub (Inflight Dublin’s end-to-end wireless IFE system) across the full flynas fleet, as part of a 2-year contract with the Saudi carrier. flynas is the leading low-cost carrier in Saudi Arabia and has a fleet of 30 aircraft, operating over 1,000 scheduled flights every week. The airline flies to 17 destinations within Saudi Arabia and 53 international destinations. Our collaboration with flynas aims to significantly enhance the airline’s passenger experience through innovative technology trends, resulting in a robust, yet easy to install IFE solution.  The new agreement supports flynas’ dedication to elevating passenger experience to the new heights. flynas passengers can enjoy movies, TV shows, music and podcasts, games, publications, a real time moving map, and the ability to provide feedback via a passenger survey. The system is currently offered in Arabic and English languages and can be simply accessed through a web browser using a phone, tablet or laptop.

flynas has the exclusive rights for use of the system in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and were thrilled with the speedy rollout (project took less than 4 weeks from contract stage to delivery of the first servers).

Everhub wireless system is a one-stop shop for all things IFE. Consisting of certified hardware, a versatile control centre and user-friendly front-end software. Each box can deliver over 12 hours of streamed video content. Inflight Dublin Chief Executive Officer, John White, further adds: “We’re delighted to be extending our wireless footprint into the MEA region. flynas is one of the leading LCC in the whole region and it makes us proud to be a part of their long-term passengers’ commitment.”

Inflight Dublin, the inflight entertainment content and software provider, has announced the appointment of David Miller as its Chief of Technology Officer (CTO) as of the 10^th September, 2018.

This newly created management position within the company’s headquarters in Dublin, is a result of its continuous growth and expansion within the Inflight Entertainment (IFE) industry.  Mr. Miller will lead the Software Development, Audio-Video and IT functions of the business, as well as joining the Senior Management Team.

David has been a Senior Manager in information technology & venture capital industries with over 30 year’s managerial, business development, and venture capital experience.  Throughout his professional career, David has held CTO, COO and senior product development positions for organisations including AdaptiveMobile Security, IONA Technologies, eSpatial, and TERMINALFOUR.  In addition to this, David has also worked with some key players in the aviation industry such as Boeing commercial aircraft group, and leading Irish airline Aer Lingus.

David himself also spoke of his enthusiasm to get started at Inflight Dublin:

“I’m excited to be joining the Inflight Dublin team. The company is building on a very successful content business to include an integrated wireless delivery and services capability. This enhances the overall passenger experience and provides our clients with a one stop shop incorporating content, design and delivery in a single offering to boost revenues!”

Everhub™ enables passengers to engage with entertainment, on-board retail, and destination services via their mobile device or laptop. Via these devices, the passengers will be able to stream movies and audio files, read magazines and newspapers, play games, with children’s movies also available…… In the initial phase, Inflight Dublin will be offering the latest content, including movies, TV, Audio, Games, Magazines and Newspapers, provided in different languages. The second phase will include the rollout of the extended service offering further content such as destination services, ground transportation services, and retail services.

John White, Inflight Dublin’s CEO, adds: “This is our first Everhub™ partnership in Central Europe and we couldn’t be more excited! Smartwings’s continuous dedication to elevating passenger experience sits accordingly with our strategic vision on bringing IFE to every airborne passenger.” Everhub™ launched onboard Smartwings on selected flights from 24^th of November 2017.

Challenge

What was the requirement identified by PrivatAir? PrivatAir is a Geneva-based business jet operator who delivers the highest quality inflight service to its customers. PrivatAir has been in operation for over 40 years, employs 400 people and has operating bases in Frankfurt (Germany), Geneva (Switzerland) and Copenhagen (Denmark). A key part of its service is the Inflight Entertainment offering. PrivatAir had a pre-loaded iPad solution that offered passengers movies, TV shows, music, games and digital publications. There were several logistics and operational problems with this solution. Airline crew had to manually update each single iPad with new content. Updates were happening all around the world (system breaking down), adding hours to their already busy schedule, which resulted in a real culprit for crew efficiency. Airline wished to offer a more dynamic, flexible IFE product that reduced cost and improved crew logistics and was looking at new ways on how to do this.

Solution

Privatair Everhub deployment   Inflight Dublin evaluated the operation and proposed our Wireless Everhub solution that would not only ensure costs savings, but would also mitigate the previous logistic issues that crew were experiencing by eliminating the manual updating of the iPads. After the initial presentation with PrivatAir / Hapag Lloyd team, they were very impressed and happy to proceed with the wireless solution. PrivatAir was included from a design point of view and collaboratively we fine-tuned the brand design. We then had a workshop with the crew and team in which we discussed their pain points and reviewed the current setup. In light of this, we demonstrated how the new set up would work and how more efficient it would be. Inflight Dublin suggested a portable wireless IFE server to be utilised as a streaming service. This meant that only the server needed to be updated, rather than having to update all iPads manually. The server streams video and audio files to the iPads and enables passengers to download their preferred publications. The experience for the passenger was identical to the pre-loaded iPad scenario, however, with an added benefit… they could also use their own mobile devices to stream media and download publications. For the crew, Inflight Dublin provided a dedicated mobile application. This “crew app” allowed a crew member to download the daily publication package before they boarded the aircraft, and with a push of a button, push the new package to the wireless IFE server.  

Outcome

From the content point of view, we provide PrivatAir with 10 movies, 10 TV Shows, 50 Albums, Publications and airline material per cycle.

This solution improved the passenger experience, by allowing PrivatAir to download the digital publications to their own devices. It also saved over 5 hours of work, per day, for PrivatAir’s crew, by providing a quick and easy way for them to update the digital publications. Senior Vice-President of Business Aviation at the airline, Pedro Caneira, reiterated that “Inflight Dublin developed a bespoke wireless IFE system, with crew management App…delivered in a highly efficient and professional manner. ”