It is still remarkable when you board a flight, after trying to squeeze a few final minutes out of the airport WiFi connection, when you see that your aircraft has its own internet connection. Although the technology to connect an aircraft to wireless internet-providing satellites has been around for the best part of the last ten years, the global fleet rollout is less than half of global seat capacity, yet the in-flight connectivity market is set to increase from US$1.5bn in 2020 to over US$5bn by 2027. However, evolving technology is taking the concept of a ‘connected aircraft’ further and deeper than simply allowing passengers to scroll through their Instagram feed at 35,000 feet.
Continue Reading Connected Aircraft: modernising technology in the skies

Rohan Soni
The return of the MAX…once again
2020 was a challenging year for the aviation industry as a whole due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but for Boeing it has been an even more challenging time as it has also had to deal with the global grounding of its flagship product, the 737 MAX, since March 2019.
The 737 MAX was launched with the intention of becoming Boeing’s market-leading narrow-body aircraft, trying to break through the stiff competition in the narrow-body market from its main competitor, Airbus. However, that aspiration has so far failed to materialise due to the global grounding of the aircraft in March 2019 following two catastrophic incidents. At its peak, with over 750 MAXs grounded and unable to generate revenue, Boeing faced a significant challenge to return the MAX to the skies and restore the confidence of regulators and safety authorities, its customers and the flying public around the world.
Continue Reading The return of the MAX…once again
All about that baseline: Developments in the UK ETS and the CORSIA emissions baseline
The landscape of environmental regulation is changing for aviation operators, due to a powerful combination of global pressures to reduce emissions for one of the transportation sectors with the largest emissions outputs. Plans have recently been published for the UK Emissions Trading System (UK ETS), which is proposed to take the place of the EU ETS when the UK leaves the European Union at the end of 2020.
Plans to establish a baseline emissions reference for the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) have also been adjusted to reflect the dramatic drop in 2020 aviation emissions resulting from responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the context of a heated debate over long-term environmental goals and the aviation industry’s survival.
Fight or flight? The eternal battle for efficiency
The Extinction Rebellion protests in London have finally died down, after several weeks of aggravation and disruption to City commuters making their way to work, protestors gluing themselves to overground trains and grinding traffic on Waterloo Bridge and at Oxford Circus to a halt. Their execution was annoying, but they had a point. Serious remedial action needs to be taken within the next 12 years, or humans will have taken our fragile environmental state one step too far away from recovery. The automotive, rail and shipping industries have already put electrification and environmentally conscious fuel-saving on the menu. Why then has the aviation industry, known to be a development trailblazer, not yet been able to make hybridisation more readily available in the commercial aviation space?
It may well be a question of scale. Batteries used for electric cars are fairly small and therefore easier to manufacture. Overall, battery packs are heavier than their combustion engine counterparts. Aircraft-grade batteries are weighing in between 2 and 3 metric tons (that’s Range Rover heavy). This means that aircraft manufacturers will need smarter materials to reduce some weight to compensate for those heavy batteries and their cooling systems.Continue Reading Fight or flight? The eternal battle for efficiency