Inflight wifi access is a vital part of the airline passenger experience, but it is also an elephant in the room when it comes to merchandising, retailing and personalisation.
For airlines, tech providers and their commercial partners, having access to passengers' devices at 30,000 feet is a great in-the-moment upselling opportunity, providing of course that the passengers can get online with a strong enough signal to feel confident about buying.
The technical and regulatory landscape for in-flight connectivity is complicated. At the risk of oversimplifying, the signal can come from a server on the plane, satellites in the sky or an antenna on the ground.
And even then there is a bandwidth issue - what happens if everyone on board starts downloading the latest box set at the same time?
"A customer experience similar to the comfort of high-speed broadband at home" is the ultimate aim, and that is a step closer now for one of Europe's biggest airline groups - IAG.
The parent company of British Airways, Vueling, Iberia and Aer Lingus has been named as the launch customer for the European Aviation Network (EAN), a joint venture between Inmarsat and Deutsche Telekom.
What makes the EAN special is that it combines Inmarsat's satellite technology with Deutsche Telecom's ground-based network. This allows EAN to switch between the signals and to concentrate coverage on the flight paths used across Europe.
Kitting out the planes accordingly is a big task, with IAG eamarking more than 300 of its planes to have access to EAN. It wants 90% of its short-haul fleet to provide passengers with home-quality high-speed broadband by 2019.
The release specifies that IAG is the launch customer for EAN, although in September 2015 Inmarsat and Deutsche Telekom said that "Lufthansa is committed to a flight trial programme of EAN from 2017".
It is not clear how or why IAG has leapfrogged Lufthansa to become the launch customer for EAN and it will be interesting to see how IAG markets what seems like a competitive advantage over its European peers.
Inflight wifi has the potential to become a significant ancillary revenue stream on its own, bookable with bags, seats and meals. But having access to a captive audience could also be a big earner for airlines who are creative in their approach to this new opportunity.
Related reading from Tnooz:
IFEC hack spat – Panasonic denies alleged inflight security flaws (Dec16)
This study pinpoints Europe’s next big ancillary: inflight wifi (Oct15)
NB Image by P.Lange/BigStock