Panasonic Avionics Corporation (PAC) designs, engineers, manufactures, sells and installs customized in-flight entertainment and communications devices to airlines worldwide. It is a subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation of North America, the principal North American subsidiary of

Panasonic Corporation formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...

. Panasonic Avionics Corporation was founded in 1979 as Matsushita Avionics Systems Corporation and changed its name in 2005. It is headquartered in

Irvine, California Irvine () is a master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 197 ...

and has major business functions in

Bothell, WA Bothell () is a city in King and Snohomish counties in the U.S. state of Washington. It is part of the Seattle metropolitan area, situated near the northeast end of Lake Washington. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 48,161 resid ...

Clients

PAC is a supplier of

in-flight entertainment In-flight entertainment (IFE) refers to the entertainment available to aircraft passengers during a flight. In 1936, the airship '' Hindenburg'' offered passengers a piano, lounge, dining room, smoking room, and bar during the -day flight betwee ...

equipment, including music, video on demand (movies and television shows), in-flight shopping, phone service, email, video games, and GPS flight location display. PAC supplies equipment to

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and ...

Airbus Airbus SE (; ; ; ) is a European multinational aerospace corporation. Airbus designs, manufactures and sells civil and military aerospace products worldwide and manufactures aircraft throughout the world. The company has three divisions: '' ...

and Bombardier. Competitors in the IFE market include

Thales Group Thales Group () is a French multinational company that designs, develops and manufactures electrical systems as well as devices and equipment for the aerospace, defence, transportation and security sectors. The company is headquartered in Pari ...

Rockwell Collins Rockwell Collins was a multinational corporation headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, providing avionics and information technology systems and services to government agencies and aircraft manufacturers. It was formed when the Collins Radio Co ...

, Safran/Zodiac In-Flight Innovations and LiveTV. In late 2009,

Lufthansa Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), commonly shortened to Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. When combined with its subsidiaries, it is the second- largest airline in Europe in terms of passengers carried. Lufthansa is one of the five founding ...

announced that starting mid-2010 they will re-launch their 'FlyNet' service with Panasonic Avionics' satellite-based

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

technology offering passengers in-flight Internet and cellphone connections. Lufthansa will make use of their existing onboard hardware that had been installed in 2003 by

Connexion by Boeing Connexion by Boeing (CBB) was an in-flight online internet connectivity service from Boeing. This service allowed travellers to access a high-speed internet connection while on board a plane in flight through a wired Ethernet or a wireless 802.1 ...

, the now defunct provider of the airline's previous onboard connectivity system.

Operations

The product engineering and development departments are located in Irvine,CA; program management, certification, system installation engineering and quality are located in

Bothell, Washington Bothell () is a city in King County, Washington, King and Snohomish County, Washington, Snohomish counties in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. It is part of the Seattle metropolitan area, situated near the northeast end of Lake ...

, and manufacturing is performed in

Osaka, Japan is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2.7 ...

. Other offices and repair facilities are located worldwide, with major offices in Toulouse, Hamburg, London, Dallas, Dubai and Singapore. Panasonic Avionics Corporation is

AS9100 AS9100 is a widely adopted and standardized quality management system for the aerospace industry. It was released in October, 1999, by the Society of Automotive Engineers and the European Association of Aerospace Industries. AS9100 replaces the ...

ISO 14001 ISO 14000 is a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations (processes, etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land); (b) ...

, and ISO 27000 certified.

Technology

In 2017, Panasonic Avionics decided to cancel planned investment in geostationary satellites, in the wake of development in low earth orbit satellite constellations. This decision could be due to potential future competition from the

Starlink Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX, providing satellite Internet access coverage to 45 countries. It also aims for global mobile phone service after 2023. SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019. As ...

and

OneWeb OneWeb (legally Network Access Associates Ltd) is a communications company that aims to build broadband satellite Internet services. The company is headquartered in London, and has offices in Virginia, US and a satellite manufacturing facility ...

satellite constellations. One of the key technical differences is that low earth orbit satellites provide shorter latencies, because the signal doesn't have to travel 35,786 km (22,236 mi) back and forth to the geostationary orbit.

Controversy

In March 2013, it was reported that American authorities were investigating the subsidiary for bribery. In February 2017, Panasonic said that PAC was being investigated by the DOJ and the SEC under the FCPA. In December of 2018, the former

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

and

CFO The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...

of the company settled with the SEC and agreed to pay a total of $280 million to the Department of Justice and the SEC.

References

{{Panasonic Panasonic Satellite Internet access

Clients

Operations

Technology

Controversy

See also

References