Gogo Business Aviation (NASDAQ: GOGO) shares advanced mid-week Wednesday, in conjunction with Duncan Aviation, has completed the first installation of Gogo Galileo HDX on a Bombardier Challenger 300 and has commenced flight testing as the company marches toward commercial launch of its Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) global broadband solution later this year.
Installation of the Challenger consisted only of adding the fuselage-mounted antenna on top of the aircraft, running power from the aircraft to the antenna, and running a data line from the HDX back to the already-installed AVANCE L5 LRU (line replaceable unit).
"Our expert team completed the installation, and then alongside Gogo's engineers, immediately started testing the system on the ground with eight devices connected and streaming at the same time," said Duncan Aviation Houston Satellite Manager Mark Winter. "It was impressive to say the least, and we know our customers who upgrade to Gogo Galileo will love this step-function improvement in the connectivity experience."
Gogo will now enter the next phase of testing to finetune the performance and integrity of the system, including electromagnetic interference (EMI) ground testing, vibe and buffeting testing, and a robust flight-testing campaign.
"Reaching this milestone puts Gogo Galileo HDX on track to launch in the fourth quarter, on time and on budget," said Gogo CEO Sergio Aguirre. "Gogo Galileo customers will experience highly reliable service on the Eutelsat OneWeb enterprise grade LEO satellite network, which unlike competitive LEO networks, does not share bandwidth with consumer users."
GOGO shares captured nine cents, or 1.1%, to $7.62.
