Air France supplies satellite views of flights

Air France is showing its passengers satellite views of the countries, cities and terrain they are flying over, thanks to a new partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA).
The French airline receives satellite images of varying resolutions from ESA on CD-ROMs and uses them to create a program lasting the full length of each flight on its services from Paris to Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Singapore.
Air France says it is the first airline in the world to offer the service to passengers. The airline shows the satellite-image programs on a dedicated channel on its 777s' inflight entertainment (IFE) systems, which provide seat-back screens for each passenger.
The images are integrated into the Geovision flight-information displays that passengers can see on their seat-back screens. Geovision is Air France's brand name for the Airshow flight-information software produced by Rockwell Collins in Tustin, Calif.
Initially Air France has supplied the satellite-image CD-ROMs to its fleet of 14 Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, which operate the airline's routes to India and Singapore, said Christian Maquin, the Air France marketing department project manager overseeing the ESA satellite-imagery project.
10/09/07 Chris Kjelgaard/Aviation.com/MSNBC

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Categories: Foreign Sep 2007, New Sep 2007