History

Breaking the information barrier

In 1903, the Wright brothers made aviation history when they broke the chains of gravity holding man to the earth. In 1947, Chuck Yeager ushered in a new age of flight when he broke the sound barrier. In 1999, Ralph Yost from the FAA Technical Center broke the information barrier when he conceived of a system in which aircraft would be connected with a scalable, general purpose, and multi-application aviation data channel and treated as nodes in a network. The Airborne Internet Consortium (AIC) is helping to advocate this concept, which is known as the Airborne Internet.

The beginning

In July of 1999, NASA Langley Research Center held a Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) Planning Conference. SATS is an idea being developed by NASA in which small aircraft and the nation's 5,000+ small airports will be utilized for public transportation.

In one of the conference sessions, it was envisioned that in order for SATS to be implemented, a broadband radio would be required to connect the aircraft. It would carry all communications, navigation, and surveillance (CNS) data over a single wide-bandwidth channel—unlike the current approach where many different radios and frequencies are used to provide CNS functions.

During the session, Ralph Yost made an analogy between aircraft and devices on a computer network. When the entire conference was briefed on the results of the session, Dr. Bruce Holmes of NASA described the concept of a peer-to-peer aircraft network connected with broadband radios as an “Airborne Internet”.

The airborneinternet.com website

In 2002, Ralph Yost created a website containing Airborne Internet resources such as white papers, briefings, and reports. The website also covered news and events relevant to the development of the Airborne Internet. Many of the materials originally available on the airborneinternet.com website are located in the Resources section of this website.

The AICG

In January 2003, representatives from government, universities, and industry held the first of many Airborne Internet Collaboration Group (AICG) meetings. The AICG explored the benefits of public and private sector collaboration on the development of a systems architecture based on open standards and Internet protocols for aviation communications.

The CIE

During the AICG meetings, several members of the computer industry introduced the concept of using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) XML Web Service protocols on the Airborne Internet. The shared information space which would be created is known as the Collaborative Information Environment (CIE).

The AIC

Companies that participated in the AICG formed the Airborne Internet Consortium (AIC), which officially began operations in December 2004. If you are interested in becoming a member, please see information on how to join the AIC.