After a spectacular false dawn, broadband connectivity for business aviation is now a reality, as Brendan Gallagher discovers.

A lot of hopes were dashed when Connexion by Boeing shut up shop at the end of 2006. Several international airlines, and a growing fan club of business travellers, were sorry to lose a satellite broadband service that delivered robust Email, Internet and private network access from the airways above the oceans and wildernesses.

Also left high and dry was Rockwell Collins, which had based its eXchange offering for corporate aviation on the Connexion satellite system. The Connexion crash left business aircraft operators dependent on a single broadband provider – ARINC with its SKYLink Ku-band satellite offering.

The sector wasn’t wholly comfortable with a potential monopoly. And, as it turns out, service provision specialist ARINC could see advantages in having someone else run the equipment side of the business. Eighteen

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