Ralph Wagner: Hello, everybody. Here we are talking software for connected aircraft. And welcome to the podcast Loaded to our seventh episode. And today we are talking about the seatback of tomorrow. With me is Stefanie Schuster. So, in the future we will have LEO and let's assume it's everywhere. What does this mean for the seatback? What is the seatback screen? What is entertainment? What is passenger engagement? How does all of this fit together in environment with high bandwidth and low latency?

Stefanie Schuster: Well, when we assume that you have really good connectivity on your entire fleet, you have, as you say, low latency, high bandwidth. You have this connectivity, of course, also for the passenger devices. So passengers sitting in their seat could just grab their phones, go online, use their own applications. So I would say you as an airline you still want to add value and keep passengers within your ecosystem and provide something that is worth using. Your device, your applications. The surrounding you as an airline design for the passenger. And when we talk about the seatback, it is well, first of all, it should be connected. Second topic is you might want to see very up-to-date information there. Which already goes into — use connectivity, take information from the cloud. You might want to see there whatever is possible as an information the airline can provide. Disruptions, information about... We discussed last time connection of different devices. So maybe information about the lavatory about the overhead bin about where your luggage is. Communication with the crew. You might want to use apps you know, from on the ground. Talking about the third-party applications integrated into the seatback. So there are a lot of new ways to provide value in such a scenario where you can use really good connectivity.

Ralph Wagner: I just had the impression you're basically listing everything that you in theory, could use as a passenger, but you do take care of the environment. You're not thinking about the environment. Traditionally looking at an infrastructure, looking at a seatback solution traditionally, you look at the environment. You look at, there is a server, they are some ARINC 429 data. There is your seatback screen. So usually you were looking at okay what do I have, and then let's make some beauty around what I have. And then I have like movies. I have a moving map. And everything is built around what I have. And you concentrate a lot around how does this brand look like, how the colors and the buttons and so on. But you were just talking about all kinds of stuff, like where is my luggage and how communicating with the crew. And so you're combining information from whatever source. What does this mean for the seatback? What does it mean for the focus of the seatback when the seatback today is still associated with entertainment? You have very, very good expensive movies you bring on board and then you show them. And then you have some stuff around — I don't want to devalue the moving map, it's very important, but this is something that is then connected to flight data you have in the aircraft. Okay. But this is basically it. Why do you connect everything?

Stefanie Schuster: Well, the connectivity forces you to think more from the passenger perspective. It's for me a little bit connected to maybe the audience is not as captive anymore as they were in the past, where the seatback was the only possibility for them to watch something or get information throughout the flight. Now they have their own devices that are connected. So there is turnaround in this thinking how to provide value.

Ralph Wagner: So let me refer back to the traditional seatback screen. So traditional seatback screen is you have your closed environment. You have your server. There is an AID device that provides you the flight information. And then you have your connections to light and crew call and then to the screens. You have the network to the screens. The screens themselves are connected to the server. And all in all is one infrastructure. It's one box with the hardware. So it's all together. So this is something which is, I would say, the traditional way how to build an IFE system.

Stefanie Schuster: And a lot of wires in between.

Ralph Wagner: Yes. And a lot of wires in between. But let's stick into this infrastructure. This infrastructure changed as well over the years, or at least during the last years. There was a lot of talks around the platform. What was this platform about?

Stefanie Schuster: Well I would say that you just mentioned the traditional IFE setup where it was mainly you had the server, and then you had the seatback devices with the front-end application. And the split was between those two. But it was one environment.

Ralph Wagner: I would not see traditional. I would say it's even today like.

Stefanie Schuster: Yeah, well, but it was for a long time and now it is already changing. So when we look into the current approaches, which are already a good next step, there is already more of a split going on on both sides. So on the server it's not just one thing. You have the server as a hardware, and then IFE providers already opening up and providing the platforms. So already thinking more about how to use split infrastructure and applications. Probably on the seatback side it's not yet that split. I guess it's right now the split started more on the server side to enable own applications, third-party applications to be sitting on the server and being used by the front-end application. But the seatback is not yet so separated into infrastructure and applications.

Ralph Wagner: I also think that even the server — I would even say infrastructure, because there are still a lot of layers on top of what the providers are currently providing, and also how the communication, the software communication takes place between seatback screen and server. And you can change things on the seatback screen too, but also in a very limited way, how you can actually influence the seatback screen. It's a lot about design, it's a lot about usability to some extent. But there's still this combination of the IFE definition: you have the server, you have the clients, you have the cabling in between. And this is one thing. And the content flows typically into a server and from the server then to the screens, or avionics data is coming from an AID device, and then basically moves also into the server and from there to the screens. Now with LEO connectivity, what is changing in this infrastructure?

Stefanie Schuster: I would say you add the cloud to the picture. So the first developments in this direction are already adding cloud services, cloud connection to the seatback solutions. What we are having today is still rather server-centric. You are adding the cloud, which is good — a first good step, but it's of course not yet cloud-centric, right? It's still all centralized on the server, and you have the connection between the seatback applications and the server. And the connectivity is also typically connected to the server, like not the seatback devices themselves — it's to the server.

Ralph Wagner: This is a kind of a complicated thing in some of the constellations, how the antennas are set up and so on, that there is not just a default cable going to the server. But this is the architecture, I think, which is currently communicated: you're connecting the IFE system. But what you technically do, from the software side as well, is you are connecting the server. So you still see the IFE as a closed system — which is again avionics, your server, your network infrastructure, your seatback screen. And the current idea is connect the server to a connectivity option so that you can use the connectivity in your IFE and this definition as a whole.

Stefanie Schuster: It is a good direction right now, I would say — a strong proposition compared to some years ago. It still comes with a few challenges, right? From a technical perspective: designing what would come from the cloud, what should be on the server, what should be centralized, what is even exactly offered. So how far can I go as an airline? How much can I own? How easy is it to integrate third-party applications? Because it's not yet so long on the market and not yet so routine to just see it separate. Okay. So now we took a look back on where we're coming from in the area of seatback screen, seatback IFE, and we discussed how it has been developing over the years and where we are right now. Still, how we started in this episode was a vision of how to take it even further — like what are the next steps? How would you describe how you see the seatback of tomorrow?

Ralph Wagner: Our last podcast was about CSMIM and about a broker that connects devices of any kind. I think you need to combine this. And I think in the future you need to disassemble the IFE. IFE is often also like a synonym for a system on board that I can utilize for something, but it's mainly driven by entertainment. The seatback screen is actually a passenger engagement device. Everybody's using the engagement term today, but I think it is true: it's something where the airline can engage with a passenger. And because of connectivity, this engagement can be by far more personalized. It can contain more functionality than it could before, with a not-connected aircraft, or an aircraft that does not really have a real-time connection with low latency. What I believe you will see in the future is that airlines want more personalized, more content, different types of content on the seatback screen, and I think they will separate this from the entertainment — from the movie. It will be even something where you maybe have a streamer instead of an IFE system on board, where the airline needs to think about what their communication need to the passenger is, what data and information they want from the passenger, and what they want to provide — and whether they want to provide it from an onboard infrastructure, or from the ground. The screen itself, from my perspective, is getting to be a device that is personalized to the passenger sitting in front of it. And the server on board is needed for everything that is originating on board. Let's say you connect to a crew application through the server on board, you connect to the avionics data through the server on board, you turn the light on and off through the server on board. But you do not get your information about your connecting flight from the server on board. You have the bandwidth, and you have the latency, so that this screen, as an entity, can call the ground directly and ask for this information. So the screen is getting into two infrastructure layers: one infrastructure layer that is more of a network layer, where it belongs to the onboard infrastructure and can talk to different devices, and it belongs to the cloud — to whatever kind of services, to another streaming service, to a service that does disruption management, your booking, your upgrades, your payment, your authentication. This all runs, from my perspective, directly to the ground from the screen.

Stefanie Schuster: There were now a lot of topics covered. Let's go into them step by step. You mentioned IFE in the beginning, and even whatever kind of IFE, right? Is it airline-owned entertainment, or is it just some OTT streaming application? But IFE might be just one of the applications, which already goes, if we stay with the separation topic we had before, into an even stronger split between infrastructure and applications.

Ralph Wagner: Absolutely. I think that.

Stefanie Schuster: Throughout, right? On all the different — not only the server, but also the seatback, especially the seatback screens.

Ralph Wagner: You need to look at — yes, you have an infrastructure on board that you need to operate, also in the case of disconnection, so that the system is resilient and still functions. So for this you need to have the devices still able to communicate with other devices on board. They still receive data from other devices on board. The devices need also to be able to store data themselves, to be able to operate in a disconnected fashion — to have content, have movies, have passenger data synchronized upfront or synchronized while they were connected, or even if they are not connected at all, they need to have a functionality at hand that works. But this is not the main goal. I don't think that this is how you should design a system, that this is the main purpose of the system to function like that. It is a fallback. And the real system actually has the cloud as a brain for the passenger engagement, and has the infrastructure on board to be part of the network on board, and to be able to communicate on board with other devices — be it the lavatory that shows it's occupied or not, or the crew sending a message, or avionics data to render your map. These two networks need to function at the same time on a seatback screen. So this is how I think a screen will be designed in the future — not part of the IFE as such, how it's traditionally described in the beginning.

Stefanie Schuster: I would say one approach to see it is also to say the seatback is one cabin device. There are other devices as well — there are branding panels and crew devices, and there might be displays in the ceiling and in the windows, and I don't know where they will be in the future. Everywhere. But the seatback is one out of several cabin devices, and the seatback should leverage connectivity, should be connected. It should be able to leverage avionics information, of course, cabin information. But in the end, you design the use cases and the interface with the applications you need in this specific place, because there is a passenger sitting there.

Ralph Wagner: Yes. And you need to utilize as well — if you think, for example, of personalization of data and the usage of authentication mechanisms, it's something where I believe this is a cloud-driven act. So now let's add another device to the picture, which is your phone. Your phone can also participate in the network on board. And it can participate, obviously, in the cloud if you are connected. And in the cloud, you as an airline have a service that authenticates your user. You have your loyalty program, you have a way of figuring out who the passenger is, what preferences the passenger has, and so on. Now you need to combine that. You need to be able to say: I receive on my seatback screen, let's say, a QR code or something like that. I have my airline app where I can scan this code, and then I authenticate to the cloud, to your loyalty program, where you get a true authentication. You get that back, and in parallel, because you scan the code, the cloud also knows every single device that is connected, knows that this device provided you this QR code, and joins you with that. So the device is also connected to the cloud, to your loyalty program, and knows who you are. And with this you can now execute payments. You can do much more than you can do today. And this is something that is, for me, also the mobile phone taking part in the network on board as well as in your cloud network on the ground. And this is how I would see the future of a seatback screen. So the server on board is more of an infrastructure device, a cabin signal device where you get your PA announcement delivered. But it's not the hub to the cloud.

Stefanie Schuster: Okay. So if we conclude, there are different areas to take care for. On the one hand, you have the cabin infrastructure, and the seatback screen as one part of this cabin infrastructure — which means connected to the cloud, making it possible to get information from other devices, making it possible to integrate applications, having this first of all, without any use case. It's not an IFE, it's a cabin device.

Ralph Wagner: Absolutely.

Stefanie Schuster: Then the second part is the applications you run there, where we said it goes into a much more cloud-centric approach, not server-centric anymore — leveraging any kind of applications, getting them into the seatback screen, and getting this cloud connection also directly to that seatback screen. And the third topic you just mentioned: passenger engagement, passenger authentication. So always making sure the passenger is identified and can use that seatback screen in a personal way, connected to the personal device — because you might want to have authentication and payment not on the publicly visible screen, you do that via your personal device. But then you have the possibility to have your screen as part of your environment, with the information you would like to see throughout the flight.

Ralph Wagner: Absolutely. And with this, you get a true personalized passenger engagement device in front of you, connected to your personal devices, connected to cloud infrastructure, connected to your streaming app, connected to your entertainment app, connected to your flight, to your destination information. So with this, it gets a real, true personalized device.