Panasonic
Inflight entertainment lifts off with seat-back companion and streaming apps.
Panasonic Avionics Corporation (PAC) is a division of Panasonic that focuses on developing and deploying In‑Flight Entertainment systems. With a large footprint in international cross-continent air travel, PAC owns a significant share of the worldwide inflight entertainment market.
PAC came to us in late 2014 as they were exploring how passengers’ personal devices could be used to supplement or replace their current seat-back entertainment systems. (They also wanted to add entertainment options to several small-to-mid-sized carriers without committing to expensive seat-back systems that can cost up to $10k per seat and take up valuable passenger space.)
Our team of developers, designers, and project managers worked with PAC software engineers to develop the PanaSky applications. These phone and tablet products are white-labeled and resold to PAC’s airline customers, either as a companion to seat‑back systems or as standalone applications.
- iOS Development
- Android Development
- UX Design
- UI Design
- QA & Testing
- Project Management
OUR ROLE
- 4-10 People
TEAM
- Ongoing since 2014
DURATION
Impact
Mercury has built three different offerings for PAC. The first, known as the Companion Application, is designed to showcase entertainment content on the ground that will be available during a passenger’s flight. Once on board, the passenger can pair the companion application with their seatback monitor and control the entertainment experience on the seatback from their personal device. The user can continue to explore other airline content on their device, such as digital in-flight magazines or flight maps, while the entertainment selection is displayed on the seat‑back.
The second is a streaming-only version of the first meant to be used on planes without a seat-back entertainment experience.
Finally, Mercury developed a version of the app’s functionality as modules (vs. a standalone app) that could be loaded into an airlines existing native application.
All three options can be customized and branded for each airline with their specific content.
To date, the PanaSky product has been rolled out to six different airlines (Air Vanuatu, Copa Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Lufthansa, Qantas, and Swoop) across iOS and Android, with three more on the way as of Q1 2019.
Challenges
Coast to coast service
Unlike most of the apps we work on, the final PAC products have to be tested either on the airline or in special server environments set up on-site at PAC’s Southern California offices. Mercury hired staff in the LA area to better service PAC’s account.
Focus on quality assurance
Mercury is one layer removed from most of the actual customer implementations we’re working on for the airlines, many of whom are located overseas with a significant time zone difference. For this reason, we’ve had to be especially focused on organization and quality assurance with each build.
Optimizing localization
Because most of the airlines are international carriers, the apps are all available in multiple languages. Each label and text item, both static and from the server, can be customized per airline. When you add multiple languages to the mix, handling these translations in an efficient manner became a challenge. We created a spreadsheet template that can be used by the airlines to adjust the translations as necessary and then imported into the application project easily.
Adaptable communication
In addition to having to communicate with both a ground server and an in-flight server, the applications have to communicate with the individual seatbacks, the interface for which could have been written by different vendors from airline to airline. Coming up with an adaptable communication protocol for data exchange was vital to the success of the project.
Wrangling features, styles, and airlines
From a developer standpoint, the Panasonic apps present unique challenges. With so many different airlines and styles, the core app must be nimble enough to easily accommodate a range of styles and unique features while still delivering an engaging, seamless performance. And they also must work with FAA-regulated technology, meaning that they are specifically designed to work as quickly and beautifully as customers expect on older technology.
“[The Qantas Entertainment App] gives you access to a lot more media than you could possibly have the time (or willpower) to load up onto your own device before flying…it is a great improvement on previous entertainment offerings. Due to its ease of use and impressive variety, we’re expecting it will bring countless hours of joy to Qantas domestic passengers.”
Economy Traveller