Flying connected with AVANCE L5 at Meredith

Meredith Corporation, a global media and marketing services company, has owned corporate aircraft for almost 50 years. Only two years ago, however, Assistant Chief Pilot Gary Stone and his team helped make the decision to add inflight Wi-Fi with AVANCE L5 to their two airplanes for the first time. We sat down with Gary to get his take on flying before and after inflight connectivity, why Wi-Fi is so critical to passengers and crew, and his favorite apps, features, and capabilities.

Tell us about your day-to-day as a pilot for Meredith Corporation.

I'm the Assistant Chief Pilot at Meredith. Our organization has been in aviation for many years, so operating corporate aircraft isn't new to us. We have two airplanes and seven pilots, and one aircraft is usually in the air. Most of my day-to-day is spent flying, but I also schedule the crews for flying and training, standardize our crew's procedures, and assist with the policy making.

Why did Meredith choose Gogo AVANCE L5? Did you play a role in that decision? 

I did. Our corporate management team, Director of Maintenance Galen Tolliver, the Chief Pilot and I helped choose the airplanes and everything in the airplane. We knew the corporate passengers wanted Wi-Fi. It was not even a debate. So we looked at a few alternatives. Gogo made the most sense because 99% of the time we fly in the U.S., so we weren’t interested in satellite.

We wanted a reliable domestic inflight connectivity solution. We thought air-to ground based made the most sense and Gogo AVANCE L5 was the market leader. The decision to go with Gogo was made fairly early on.

What are the primary ways that people use your inflight Wi-Fi?

We use Wi-Fi constantly in flight, both in the cabin and in the cockpit. As pilots, we’re always looking down the road, checking weather, live radar, communicating with the office as we fly, our scheduler, maintenance, you name it. We used to have to do all that by sending messages out of the airplane, which took a while and wasn’t nearly as convenient. The instant ability to communicate is just a game-changer.

I would say weather apps are the ones we use most often with aircraft Wi-Fi. We like ARINCDirect for radar and weather checking. The onboard radar is our primary radar and we have XM weather on the airplane, but we use pilot apps when one of those systems fails. 

We also use Flightdocs a lot to communicate with maintenance. We can keep them totally up to date with any maintenance issues and any questions that we have. While they’re on the ground, they’re seeing our Flightdocs messages and they’re updating us with what they’re working on, so we can check things as we fly. It makes it much more efficient. 

There’s also a fair amount of texting to the folks ahead. Wi-Fi in the cockpit gives us instant communication with our people on the ground. We’ll let them know what time we’re going to arrive at our destination and make sure we have all the arrangements set up for ground transportation. It helps us more quickly and effectively stay in touch with people and keep things coordinated. Those are huge and positive changes.

Oh, and we use a little Twitter once in a while, so we don’t miss out on what’s happening in the world.

As a pilot, how would you compare life before Wi-Fi vs. after?

Weather is really a big one. With inflight Wi-Fi, now we’re able to stay totally on top of current weather, covering the whole United States. In the early days, onboard radar would reach about 100 miles. That was the only weather you had unless you used the radio and called down and someone would describe what they were seeing. We now instantly have all this live weather for flying. We go from Des Moines to New York all the time and we can plan way ahead and make route adjustments on the fly.
 

What are the biggest benefits of inflight Wi-Fi from your passengers' perspective?

It’s funny - you can always tell when we hit 3,000 feet. Before then, the passengers are all talking to each other and then it just goes quiet because they’re all online. They check email, market reports, that kind of thing. It’s important that when we land in New York, for instance, they’re ready to go. I was just talking to a guy yesterday who told me that with inflight Wi-Fi, when they land in New York after a two-hour flight from Des Moines, it’s like they’re two hours ahead of the game when they get on the ground. A lot can happen in two hours, especially during something like an acquisition; that ability to communicate and stay abreast of whatever project they’re working on is a really big deal.

It makes a difference when we’re flying customers, too. We’ll often bring them into Des Moines or take them to New York so they can be wined and dined, and they almost always ask if we have Wi-Fi on the plane. When we used to say “no” they lived with it, but now it makes a very positive impression. They’re able to continue what they’re doing and we’re able to make sure that transportation and all the logistics for them are all squared away. With the aircraft Wi-Fi, when we land and taxi in, our representatives are standing at the hangar waiting for them and everything is off to the right start.
 

Has Gogo's service and performance lived up to your expectations?

Customer service has been excellent. When we have issues, they’ve been there to help resolve them, giving us legitimate suggestions for how to improve whatever’s going on.

Our airplane holds 9 passengers and 2 pilots and we fly full quite a bit. With 9 people on board and everyone has their iPhone and iPad and laptop, we test the limits and bandwidth of the system. We get very few complaints and the service is great. We started with ATG 5000, but we upgraded to AVANCE L5 to get even faster service and more bandwidth. It comes down to productivity: for what people are really trying to do, it works: video conferencing, monitoring markets, and even a little down time with tv, movies, and games. People can accomplish what they want to accomplish as they fly along.

Upgrade to AVANCE L5

Meredith Corporation upgraded to AVANCE L5 on both aircraft in early 2022. Upgrading Wi-Fi on corporate aircraft gave them better performance for their passengers with limitless 4G streaming of audio and video content. AVANCE L5 also offers integrated inflight entertainment, remote diagnostics, and additional pilot data. Plus, their aircraft are future-ready for Gogo 5G in the fall of 2023.