Honeywell’s B757 test aircraft was in Mumbai recently on The Power of Connected World Tour, to showcase the best in class ‘connected capabilities’ to the India market. The Connected Aircraft that started its journey from San Francisco International Airport on May 31, flew to many world cities including Washington, New York, Toronto, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Moscow, Paris and Dubai, before reaching Mumbai on July 3, 2017. While the benefits of the Connected Aircraft range from fleet management to flight operations to passenger experience to ground operations, the highlight of the show was in-flight high speed Wi-Fi experience – GX Aviation powered by JetWave even enabled live streaming of Netflix movie. The other technologies in the Connected Aircraft are – Connected Radar, GoDirect Maintenance, Cockpit Communication Systems, GoDirect Fuel Efficiency, GoDirect Flight Bag Pro, GoDirect Toolkit & GoDirect Network, GoDirect Flight Preview, Aspire 300, GoDirect Weather, GoDirect Ground Handling.
Along with the international flight crew, on board was Neelu Khatri, president, Aerospace, Honeywell India and Sasi (Sunny) Kancharla, customer business leader – Middle East and India, Honeywell Aerospace. “Honeywell is in avionics, propulsion, engines, satcom technology, it is natural for us to be in connected space. This is a model aircraft to show our technologies,” said Kharti.
Pointing out that this is the first time the Connected Aircraft has come to India Kancharla stated, “We see a great potential in the India market, which has budget airlines but the passenger is high tech.” He informed that many of the new technologies by Honeywell are being deployed in the new Neo planes by Indigo, while Air India is using the Weather Radar technology.