Thales delivered to Airbus the first lab unit of its TopFlight Satcom Satellite Data Unit just 11 months after being awarded the contract. TopFlight is part of the technology behind the Airbus/SITA OnAir joint venture that will enable passengers to use their mobile phones or other PEDs to make voice calls to terrestrial telephone and mobile networks and connect to the Internet without interfering with aircraft operating systems. Pricing levels will be similar to international roaming with billing direct to the user's account. The system later will be expanded to include a cockpit air traffic management capability.

The TopFlight SDU will use the SwiftBroadband service provided by Inmarsat's 14 geostationary satellites to route calls and data to the ground. It will offer a high-speed data capacity of up to 432 kbps per channel and support two channels simultaneously, giving a bundled data capacity of as much as 900 kbps. Thales said the ARINC 781 unit is compact (housed in a single 6 MCU box), lightweight (10 kg.) and cost-effective (basic off-the-shelf unit cost in the region of $100,000 per aircraft as opposed to closer to $200,000 for conventional systems). In addition, it is adapted for the new-generation antenna systems compliant with ARINC 781 characteristics that are approximately three-quarters the width, half the length and half the height of existing antennas.

Certification of the system is expected by year end and Air France, TAP Air Portugal and bmi are launch customers, with operational trials expected to start in early 2007.