Deliberate certification cycles and fickle consumer demand typically leave the aviation industry chasing after consumer technologies, trying to adapt them for inflight use. This year’s CES show in Las Vegas, however, tells something of a different story. While there are plenty of consumer technologies being introduced that could eventually make it on to aircraft, the LG Electronics booth is garnering a lot of excitement around a technology the aviation industry has been working on for years.
One of LG’s most talked about products this year, just as in 2023, is its transparent OLED television. The company suggests it can be installed in front of windows, saving wall space, and switched to opaque for viewing.
Which is impressively similar to how AERQ positioned the screen for installation on airplanes before it was making such big waves at CES.
Access to emerging technology for AERQ
AERQ is a joint venture of LG and Lufthansa Technik, giving it access to LG’s technology and manufacturing systems. Since 2019 the company has been developing a new generation of inflight entertainment offerings, combining best-of-breed hardware from LG and LHT’s aviation market experience. And it has been showing off transparent screens for in flight use since at least 2022.
That’s around when the screens started showing up in consumer view, too. And so maybe aviation is not leading commercial demand in this case, but it certainly is not trailing nearly as bad as it has in the past. One might even argue that aero is maintaining pace with the commercial development, rather than quickly falling behind. That’s a small victory worth celebrating.
Different use cases, same cool technology
AERQ is not looking to cover windows. Rather, it sees transparent OLED screens as an option in cabin divider monuments. It can be set to transparent during critical phases of flight, allowing crew to see the entire cabin. For the rest of the flight it can be used to show flight information or advertisements to passengers.
Both use cases are interesting, and both have potential for market adoption. But seeing the aero version being marketed first (or even at close to the same time) is incredibly rare. And knowing that an aero supplier has the modern consumer tech in its production flow already could help drive sales.
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