Rockwell Collins Inc. is going Hollywood.
The company, best known as a maker of cabin controls and cockpit parts, is looking to provide digital news, movies and TV shows for airlines and executive jets.
Rockwell Collins’ Tustin office,the hub for the Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based company’s in-flight entertainment push,looks more like a media center than an aerospace outpost. Movie posters line the walls, alongside model airplanes.
Last year, Rockwell Collins moved the operation back to Orange County from Pomona. In 2002, the company moved most of its in-flight operations to Pomona, consolidating after an acquisition.
The company is one of a handful of in-flight entertainment businesses here, including Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.’s Panasonic Aviation Corp. in Lake Forest, Thales Avionics Inc. in Irvine, part of France’s Thales SA, and until recently, Boeing Co., which just closed its Connexion by Boeing unit in Irvine.
The competition is friendly, said Tommy Dodson, general manager for the Tustin site.
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Flight map, Bloomberg ticker: some 20 airlines are customers |
“Our competitors are here, but they are also our partners,” he said.
Rockwell Collins sells a program to Thales and parts to Panasonic, Dodson said.
Other rivals include Honeywell Inc. and Audio International Inc.
The companies are going after a market that’s growing, thanks to an airline rebound and new jets coming into service.
Rockwell Collins’ systems are on more than 400 planes at some 20 airlines.
They include Air Canada, Air France, LAN Airlines of Chile, Air New Zealand and Japan Airlines.
U.S. carriers include American Airlines, US Airways and American Trans Air.
Executive jets are another source of business.
“The business jet market went from a $3 billion a year side note to about $15 billion in 10 years,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with Teal Group Corp. in Fairfax, Va.
Long History
Digital entertainment is a new twist for Rockwell Collins, which started in 1933 as Collins Radio Co. The company provided radio communications gear to Richard Byrd’s South Pole expedition.
Rockwell Collins boomed during the space race, supplying radio equipment for the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury programs.
Rockwell International Corp., the onetime aerospace company based in Orange County that’s now Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation Inc., bought Collins Radio in 1973.
Rockwell Collins spun off in 2001.
The company is best known for making electronic communication gear for planes, interior airplane parts, navigation systems and flight deck monitors for the defense industry.
A series of acquisitions brought it into in-flight entertainment.
In recent years, Rockwell Collins bought in-flight entertainment and communications businesses from Hughes-Avicom Inter-national, Sony TransCom, Kaiser Aerospace & Electronics Corp., Communication Solutions Inc. and Airshow Inc., among others.
Rockwell Collins recently moved several regional businesses into a new 213,000-square-foot campus in Tustin.
“We had to combine the businesses to leverage the technologies across markets in a much more aggressive way,” Dodson said.
In 2002, Rockwell Collins closed its Irvine facility and shifted work to its passenger systems site in Pomona,a move that brought long commutes for some 200 former Irvine workers.
Rockwell Collins acquired the Pomona site in 1997 from Hughes-Avicom. The Irvine site came by way of its 2002 acquisition of Sony Corp.’s Sony TransCom.
Now Rockwell Collins has about 700 people in Tustin. The company also owns Irvine defense contractor Kaiser Electroprecision, which is run separately.
The Tustin facility houses about 300 engineers, lab space and several service divisions.
It’s where seat back monitors, remote controls and retractable display screens for planes are designed and tested.
The magic happens inside Rockwell Collins’ integration lab,affectionately called the “cave” by its bleary-eyed technicians.
It’s dark with low ceilings. The room is constantly buzzing with the whir of servers.
It’s home to the Moving Map, a real-time flight map that’s a staple of global flights. It’s the one where the tiny airplane creeps ever so slowly across the world to its destination.
The company also runs the Airshow 21 program for business jets, a system acquired in Rockwell Collins’ 2002 buy of Tustin-based Airshow Inc.
Five people are on call around the clock to manage the content feed for private flights.
Back in the 1960s, playing a movie on a plane wasn’t much different than in a theater,it involved huge reel-to-reel projectors.
Today, managing in-flight entertainment is like running a Web site, according to Neil James, director of content services at Rockwell Collins.
Rockwell Collins’ systems offer passengers shopping, games, Web pages and phone access in addition to movies and TV shows.
The company designs the monitors, remote controls and software menu.
James’ team maintains the “branded user interface” and develops a new “content load” every month that includes all of the movies, commercials and TV shows played on every plane.
His group also compiles music programming about four times a year.
All is done to match the particular airline.
“You have to be hip but you also have to be aware of what the airline wants to do,” James said.
His team orders programming from all over the world, integrates it into an in-flight program and then compresses it onto one 200-gigabyte, encrypted tape to send off to the airline.
The team creates all of the graphics, text and backgrounds,everything the passenger sees on screen.
“A lot of people don’t realize that there’s so much that goes into in-flight entertainment,” James said.
In-flight entertainment is a “competitive discriminator,” analyst Aboulafia said.
A passenger might choose one airline over another because of its features, he said.
“That’s what people pay extra for,” Aboulafia said.
Part of Marketing
The tone of the TV and movie programming, the music choices and menu color schemes all play a role in the airline’s brand and message, according to James.
“It’s all about what kind of passenger experience they want,” he said.
Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd. had Rockwell Collins develop its “Q” brand of in-flight entertainment, James said.
One program, “The Edge,” is, well, more edgy, including a show about “weird diseases,” he said.
It might turn passengers’ stomachs. But it’s sure to give them a memorable flight.
Germany’s Deutsche Lufthansa AG uses its in-flight programming to reflect its “businesslike style,” James said.
First class and business passengers can access “Lufthansa Media World,” the airline’s program of on-demand movies, music, games and Web surfing through a monitor at every seat.
The menu colors match the navy blue of the upholstery in the cabin.
Rockwell Collins saw $3.9 billion in sales for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, a 12% increase from a year earlier.
Commercial systems, which includes in-flight entertainment, is set to see sales grow 12% to 14%, about twice as fast as Rockwell Collins’ government sales.
“Airbus and Boeing are selling planes at record rates,” Tustin site manager Dodson said.
Dodson, 52, is a Dallas native who is charged with combining operations from several businesses at the Tustin site.
His dad was an electrical engineer at Collins Radio for 30 years.
But things are pretty different from his dad’s days.
The goal for Rockwell Collins is to create a “flying office” for executives, with access to the Internet, phones and personal digital assistants, plus in-flight entertainment.
Talk about Hollywood.
