PIA looking for in flight entertaiment on ATR's?

[flyingsystem]

DATE:11/07/06
SOURCE:Flight International
ATR to embrace paperless cockpit

By David Kaminski-Morrow in Toulouse

ATR is intending to enable operators to move more easily towards paperless cockpits as part of an effort to further refine its turboprop models.

Filippo Bagnato, chief executive of the Toulouse-based regional aircraft manufacturer, says that introduction of electronic flight-bag capabilities and extraction of additional performance from the ATR 42 and ATR 72 airframes are among the strategies envisaged for modernising the types.

Speaking to Flight International at the delivery of the first of three newly ordered aircraft – one ATR 42-500 and two ATR 72-500s – to Pacific carrier Air Caledonie, Bagnato said that paperless cockpit environments clearly benefited crews. “We’re now implementing, to be in a position to offer electronic flight bags to customers in the next year,” he says.

ATR also wants to upgrade the types’ engines, by around mid-2007, to generate better take-off performance and perhaps increase the turboprops’ operating ceiling by around 1,000ft (300m). But Bagnato says that, because operators typically use ATRs on short sectors, increasing the aircraft’s speed is a waste of time. “I don’t want to pay one penny for speed,” he says.

ATR would rather focus on passenger comfort, he says, such as the in-flight entertainment being developed in response to demand from Asian carriers Kingfisher Airlines and Pakistan International Airlines.

Air Caledonie’s new aircraft will replace three ATR 42-320s. The carrier will receive the first of its two ATR 72-500s at the end this year and the second in 2007.

[flyingsystem]

What I dont understand is that there was nothing "special" in the first Atr delivered! What do you think brothers?

[PK777]

I remember Abbas posting a new article taking about both these airlines looking into IFE for their ATR, what i do not understand why where they not installed before delivery?

[flyingsystem]

Perhaps they want to put the system just in some of them...

[Imran Hassan]

Maybe because they haven't been developed yet for ATR's. These things do take time.

[optimist]

Maybe because they haven't been developed yet for ATR's. These things do take time.

That is the logical inference of the line; "the in-flight entertainment being developed in response to demand from Asian carriers Kingfisher Airlines and Pakistan International Airlines."