Lufthansa Captain Andreas Ritter was flying from Rio to Frankfurt on an Airbus A340-300 that was equipped with the carrier’s FlyNet-branded Ku-band inflight connectivity system.“Just south near the equator, flying northeast-bound, we hit a wall of thunderstorms I had never seen before. As the aircraft was making its takeoff from runway 24 at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, the pilots felt a buffeting vibration. It is finally now arriving. Our EFB devices are not enabled for private use in the EFB configuration,” explains Ritter. 13:42. “They said, ‘we don’t know how to certify data created in the US.

Newly released guidance will allow foreign data to be used for inflight applications.“However, through all these years, 2014 until now, we have performed large-scale trials on one fleet, all 747 aircraft.

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“Just south near the equator, flying northeast-bound, we hit a wall of thunderstorms I had never seen before. [And we’ve] integrated a profile application to circumnavigate thunderstorms vertically.The dream I have is that we switch on the seatbelt sign not after the turbulence hits, but just before so the chance of injuring flight attendants is minimized. It is switched off over China,” notes Ritter. I thought it would be a matter of a few months, but I underestimated it.We believe safety is very important and this is why my managers and I have put money into this and we believe we have one of the best products in the industry. But obviously, “you need a broadband connection which is working” and that is not always the case.Panasonic Avionics’ Ku-band network supports Lufthansa’s FlyNet system on 100% of the long-haul fleet, and the carrier is rolling out Inmarsat Global Xpress on its short-haul aircraft.“Over China, we are not allowed to use our FlyNet system. The carrier is convinced that if there is a volcanic eruption, the impact on operations will be less severe than in 2010 when Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull began to erupt. It’s not always available.”Even so, Ritter and his colleagues want to have the ability to access real-time EFB applications when connectivity is available. In our application, you can circumvent it laterally or vertically.Using turbulence avoidance technology would improve safety and mean more efficient fuel burn, he notes, “and that’s why we invest in this”. Three possible explanations have since been offered for this inconsistency: that the morning sun was blinding the cockpit crew and thus hampered color perception, that a construction error could have caused green lights despite the retracted slats, and that the crew lied. “I was too optimistic; it took much longer. As long as a cheaper link is available, why not use a cheaper link?”Ritter’s original presentation at the end of 2010 can be viewed below.

Shortly after the media briefing, the carrier started more serious research and testing.

But Germany’s civil aviation authority, the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA) would not approve of Lufthansa’s use of weather data that had not been certified by German meteorological office Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD).

“We are not using the Internet; we are tunneling from the onboard wifi directly to the Lufthansa Intranet.”So to summarize, since we have spoken that time, 7.5 years ago, we have been busy.

While flying the 1500th Boeing to its homebase at Fraport, he and the senior first officer let us in on how it feels to be flying the B747. Boeing 747-400 take-off from FRA - Duration: 13:14. At that time, Ritter believed parts of Lufthansa’s vision would become reality within a few short months. These systems are not always as reliable as pilots or passengers want them to be. The Panasonic Ku system is switched off below 10,000ft whereas GX on short-haul aircraft “is switched on immediately after takeoff but it takes a few minutes so 7,000ft or 8,000ft is when it starts to work.

Ritter says 93% of them use Windows-based EFBs, mostly the Surface Pro, though 7% use iPads.By 2015, Lufthansa pilots had the physical hardware needed to begin executing on the carrier’s vision.

All of these aircraft are flying other trajectories, but there are no visual representations of turbulence in other areas, so you could climb or descend to another level but you’re doing it completely blind because you don’t know what’s happening in the next minute.

13:14. It’s somewhat staggering to consider that all these years later, Lufthansa is only now poised to roll out the functionality commercially (it’s waiting for the formal LBA guidance to arrive any day now).Founder, Editor and Publisher Mary Kirby has covered the aviation industry for over 20 years as both a journalist and an editor. After cutting her teeth at a weekly world airline newsletter, Mary joined Flightglobal in 1999 as a reporter for its real-time news site Air Transport Intelligence. Dav Can 2,717,057 views.

We have not stopped researching, developing and testing. When we switched off the microphones, they also said, ‘why should we?’ Because it’s not their data. It was much more complex than we thought,” he now admits.That’s not to say that Lufthansa didn’t try to make it happen. This would increase overall reliability and throw out 1940’s technology.

We have a charting app and put a weather layer on the charting app, so pilots do not have to switch for different apps [one for navigation and another for weather] so it’s all in one place.

However, as this was being done, the aircraft started to … By using our site you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with our It was the year 2013.

For example, while other airlines put a weather app on the EFB, we are integrating the weather data in the EFB.

Lufthansa Captain Andreas Ritter was flying from Rio to Frankfurt on an Airbus A340-300 that was equipped with the carrier’s FlyNet-branded Ku-band inflight connectivity system.