Meggitt secures long-term agreement with Gogo

International aerospace, defence and energy engineering group Meggitt has concluded a long-term supply agreement with Gogo, the inflight internet company.

Meggitt's advanced composites facility located in Rockmart, Georgia, USA, will continue to supply the low-profile, high-performance 2Ku radome on which Gogo's latest generation high-speed, broadband system is based.

Gogo currently has 14 commercial airlines representing more than 1600 aircraft awards for the 2Ku technology. The company recently reached a milestone of 200 2Ku systems installed.

Meggitt's continuing success with Gogo has been cemented with the design of a proprietary, easy-to-install assembly comprised of a radome, seal and adapter plate, in which the radome and seal are exclusively manufactured by Meggitt.

The radome was designed by the facility in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, acquired by Meggitt from Cobham plc at the end of 2015, due to its long history of producing radomes for the U.S. military.

Meggitt transferred the 2Ku radome programme to its much larger composite production facility in Rockmart, Georgia, USA in 2016, and by end of the year had shipped over 200 radomes to Gogo.

Although early production assemblies were used exclusively for RetroFit installations on the aircraft fleet of major airlines, in May 2017 Meggitt delivered its first updated assembly to satisfy OEM LineFit requirements, initially for Airbus on A320, A330, A350 and A380 aircraft, with more OEMs to follow.

Meggitt continues to collaborate on Gogo's 2Ku radome for performance enhancements, unit cost reduction and elimination of production process waste, and to date Meggitt has produced over 750 2Ku radomes for Gogo.

David Horner, President of Meggitt Polymers & Composites commented: "This agreement confirms Gogo's confidence in Meggitt's engineering, new product introduction and programme management capability. After we acquired the Advanced Composite businesses of Cobham plc and EDAC in late 2015, we were able to leverage our new scale and achieve further savings through synergy."

"Together Gogo and Meggitt have transformed the 2Ku product line into a unique assembly that costs less for customers to install and minimizes the impact to operating costs through its extremely aerodynamic design and lightweight composite construction."