operation in the past..also some numbers to ponder at the end

Hot Topic: The Charge of the Light Brigade!    

Fiber optic-based IFE is about to make its debut. Fresh off of its second round of funding, Lumexis is finishing the packaging of their fiber optic IFE hardware and from what we understand is also promising a first-flight by year’s end. We caught up with Rich Salter and Doug Cline because we wanted to get a pre-WAEA update.

IFExpress Q: There has been a lot of buzz on the street about your development program and sales efforts. Can you get us up-to-date?

Lumexis A: Right now we are busily finishing the packaging of our hardware and as you know, this is not an R&D effort but rather an issue of manufacturing. Since the Lumexis system takes its technology from the telecom and cable industries, a lot of our hardware is COTS. This helps us keep the price down and bring a system to market at a much faster pace. We will be flying by the end of this year.

Q: Now that you have said it, what is the status of your IFE system test program?

A: Our system testing is on “spec” and on schedule and you can expect a shipset load to occur soon. As I said before, we will be flying by the end of the year and as far as we can see there are no surprises.

Q: Well that is a great lead-in to our next question, if you have a test program in place you must have a customer. Who is it?

A: I can confirm we do have a customer and it is a major US airline but more cannot be disclosed at this time.

Q: Let us go back to specifications then. What can we anticipate from the system when it’s launched?

A: We have been achieving a full gigabit in each direction to each seat. As you know, we are using a single fiber optic cable from the hub to each passenger’s seat display. It looks like the system weight will come in at under 5 pounds per seat fully installed! It certainly looks like we will be able to provide audio and video content comparably with any IFE system out there today. If you remember, each server feeds 24 seats but more importantly the servers are connected via a fiber backbone and this way content can be shared throughout the system. We are shooting for a competitive position entertainment-wise but with a much lower cost of ownership.

Q: Glad you brought it up. What is Lumexis advertising at a cost per seat for the system?

A: Before I answer that let me note that we are developing a future-proof network... some call it a 30 year network. We wanted to provide the aircraft with a high bandwidth fiber backbone that could withstand the growth of technology. Thus, airlines can realize the value of our hardware over a long period of time, and as a result the cost of ownership goes down. Having said that, we are looking at providing hardware at ½ the cost of our competition.*

Q: What will Lumexis have on display at the upcoming WAEA?

A: Ourselves, we will be walking the floor! We barely have enough time to attend the conference and certainly not enough time to build and man a display while running a lean business. We have customer commitments through 2008 and we do not want to jeopardize our schedules. You can contact us during the show by calling Rich Salter at 949 701 5096 or sending an email to rsalter@lumexis.com

Editor’s Note: To give you some numbers to think about we recently read that one IFE company was providing $3 - $4 million worth of electronics (including IFE) to Boeing as part of the B787 SFE package. If we assume the lower number of $3M and multiply by .9 to remove cockpit avionics we get a number of approximately $2.7M per aircraft. Now if we assume that each airplane has 223 seats that is roughly $12K per seat for IFE. At half that, Lumexis appears to be quite a bargain... not to mention the blazing bandwidth!