I’ll be the first to admit that as much as I appreciate and enjoy inflight Wi-Fi, satellites are a bit beyond my area of expertise. I’ll still do my best to cover this, because it doesn’t sound good…
Continue reading: Viasat Satellite Malfunctions, Could Impact Inflight Wi-Fi
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
This was clearly growth capacity so the impact is most likely going to be that Viasat will not sign contracts for additional aircraft that would result in degradation for existing customers/aircraft.
The technology of the Viasat 3 (I believe) would enable much faster connection speeds to many more customers. If it has in fact failed, I wonder if they will re-allocate the pacific satellite to the americas. Qantas were betting on Viasat 3 to finally install wifi on overseas flights. This certainly is disappointing if things don't get resolved.
That would be ideal, but will they really forego a contract for a little degradation? I doubt these contracts have much in terms of service reliability guarantees
A media person asked Delta execs about this on their earnings call this morning and they said they expect no impact although they share Viasat's disappointment at the equipment failure