Article on Ultimate Cabin Entertainment Package for Corporate Aircraft
Earlier this year, one of our dealers worked with P1 Business Aviation Magazine on a detailed article about in-flight entertainment systems. The piece featured hardware from Flight Display Systems installed in a King Air 350 and an Agusta AW109 (A109), reproduced in part below.
How do you keep your passengers happy in this competitive market and hang on to them? Give them all the business links and entertainment they need to pass the time productively… here’s how!
Harry Lees, MD of Lees Avionics (part of Gama Aviation Group, based at Farnborough, UK) believes the key to happy CEOs and repeat charter work is giving the passengers everything they could wish for in the way of business links and entertainment.
Lees
offers a wide range of cabin entertainment systems, starting with a basic solution
featuring one bulkhead-mounted screen which all passengers can see, plus a moving-map
computer and a DVD player. This system can be installed in a variety of King
Air, Hawker and Citation aircraft.
These simple entertainment systems are also suitable for helicopters. They have recently installed a system which comprises two fold-down monitors in the cabin roof of an Agusta 109 Power, together with a moving map computer and a DVD player. This arrangement is ideally suited to short-duration flights of the kind that helicopters typically undertake.
Contrasting with the basic entertainment need of short-haul flights is the system the dealer has recently fitted to a new HBC King Air 350. With eight seats in the cabin, each equipped with their own 7in LCD screen (p/n FD70ARM), passengers can watch a selection of material from any of three DVD players or the moving map computer. The moving map means passengers can see accurately where they are and the route they are travelling. Use of the Flight Display Systems map computer provides excellent data at a much more affordable level than systems offered by major avionic systems manufacturers. The map computer also provides for customised charting.
Uniquely, this King Air 350 also features a camera (p/n FD600CAM) which has been mounted on the belly to enable the passengers to watch take-off and landing and gives an excellent view of the ground. It also means they can watch the landing gear raise and lower, which gives added interest.
An ingenious and exciting extra that the dealer has incorporated on this King Air is the integration of video iPods, so that passengers can plug their own iPods into a cable-free customised dock. It means every passenger can choose to view any of the available DVDs, the moving map or the picture from the belly-mounted camera, and in addition, have their own iPod routed exclusively to their own seat.
As
well as the cabin entertainment system, they have added another small LCD screen
in the cockpit, the
‘Flipper’, from Flight Display Systems. It allows the flight crew to monitor
the belly camera so they can see the undercarriage operation. The screen folds
away when not required, and, importantly, doesn’t obscure the view of
any other instruments while it is in operation.
The whole package on the KingAir 350 is a fully integrated audio/visual system for the cabin and it competes head-on with any top-of-the-line systems that are installed in the latest corporate jets. It can be fitted to any corporate aircraft and is an expandable system.
For more information, contact Lees Aviation at Lees Avionics Ltd, Hangar 1, Wycombe Air Park, Marlow, Bucks, England SL7 3DP. Telephone +44 01494 513661, Fax +44 01494 513662 and on-line at www .leesavionics.co.uk
