The first ever commercial airline outfitted with Inmarsat SBB ACARS-enabled AVIATOR Satcom took off yesterday, June 03, on a flight from Honolulu, Hawaii to Phoenix, Arizona. The Hawaiian Airlines (HAL) Boeing 767-300 took to the skies soon after Cobham SATCOM received the Supplemental Type Certificate (STC).

Cobham SATCOM is the first manufacturer with airborne equipment enabling the new SBB ACARS data services, while also offering IP data and voice services to the flight deck of an aircraft.

Aero staffers have already received two phone calls and a test email from the flight deck, using our system.

Kim Gram, vice president of Cobham SATCOM's aeronautical business unit, said: "This is really significant. This first flight represents a milestone on our journey to offer the airline industry our game-changing AVIATOR S family of systems, e-enabling any airline in the world, and allowing the industry to improve safety and the efficiency of their airline operations."

Now we can continue with the scheduled installation of Cobham systems on the rest of the HAL fleet, enabling us to measure the quality of communications. We can then present this information to the authorities, in order to attain a formal approval of SBB as a safety service.

The next milestone for Cobham SATCOM's aeronautical team will be the first installation of their ground-breaking AVIATOR S which is designed specifically to leverage Inmarsat's new SwiftBroadband Safety service and will be available in 2016 to coincide with approvals for FANS 1/A services over SwiftBroadband.