Air France awards IFC contract to Intelsat
September 30, 2021
By Chris Forrester
Intelsat has secured an Air France contract to supply In Flight Connectivity to its Airbus A220 aircraft.
Sixty AF A220-300 aircraft will be supplied with Intelsat’s 2Ku high-speed, satellite-based inflight connectivity solution.
“We are honoured to partner with Air France and delight their passengers with a superior inflight connectivity experience on Airbus’ state-of-the-art A220 aircraft,” said John Wade, president, Commercial Aviation of Intelsat. “This award expands the total Intelsat fleet at Air France to 143 aircraft, including widebody B777s and A330s. Air France is the third airline partner to select Intelsat on the A220 airframe and our first 2Ku line-fit European airline partner.”
Intelsat’s commercial aircraft division was previously owned by Gogo, and acquired last year in a $400 million deal.
Intelsat 2Ku is the most rapidly adopted satellite-based broadband connectivity technology in aviation, currently in use by leading airlines across North America, South America, Europe and Asia.
“Accessing the internet and being able to stay in touch with family and friends while traveling has become a must have for our customers,” said Fabien Pelous, SVP/Customer Experience of Air France. “We are happy to partner with Intelsat to provide this service to our customers.”
Investing $2 billion, initially, Intelsat says it is building a unified global 5G network that will support virtually any access technology, enabling the next generation of global mobility, internet of things, and 5G services. Combining software-defined technology and a multi-orbit, multi-layer, multi-band network, we bring airlines the scale they depend upon and a single, more powerful way to connect easily.
Connectivity on Air France’s A220 fleet is expected to go live when the aircraft enters commercial service in the autumn of 2021.