How it works · intended architecture
Meridian is designed to reach the passenger through the existing cabin Wi-Fi environment, using route, destination and timing to resolve what belongs on that journey. No dedicated Meridian hardware and no passenger app are planned.
Where it lives · one
Satellite or air-to-ground network, the aircraft's own connectivity system, the cabin Wi-Fi, the passenger's own browser. No dedicated Meridian hardware is planned; what portal access a given configuration allows is validated in a pilot.
Where it lives · two
The application, the destination engine, the brand inventory and the operator's rules, the reporting: all of it lives in the cloud, reached over an encrypted passenger session. The aircraft carries none of it.
Where it lives · three
The operator's scheduling and dispatch data give Meridian the route, the landing time and the season. That is all it needs, and nothing about who is on board.
In three lines
The operator's connectivity provider connects the aircraft.
The aircraft network connects the passenger.
Meridian is designed to run the brand and discovery environment over that network.
Lives primarily in the cloud
Lives at the passenger-network layer
Trip data, destination context, and the Meridian platform
Controlled by the operator
Depends on who controls the aircraft's passenger-facing network
Meridian does not need to rebuild the aircraft. It needs to intelligently use the infrastructure already there.
Where Meridian lives
The aircraft provides access. The cloud provides intelligence.
Meridian is designed to sit above the connection the aircraft already has. The intended architecture; each configuration is confirmed in a pilot.
No competing connectivity network
Whichever provider the operator already uses carries the session. Meridian is designed to run above it; provider approval is a pilot item.
No new passenger application
The experience lives on the captive portal and in the passenger's own browser. Nothing to install, no account to browse.
No dedicated Meridian aircraft hardware
No Meridian antenna, terminal, display or avionics unit is planned. Aircraft-specific requirements are confirmed with each operator.
How Meridian knows the destination
Passengers should not have to tell the system where they are flying when that information can be obtained programmatically from the operator's own systems and commercial aviation data.
Meridian does not require access to safety-critical aircraft systems to function.
The initial architecture favors commercially available trip, scheduling and aviation-data sources over direct avionics integration — implementation stays software-led, not aircraft-modification-led.
Every source on the left is a system the operator already runs. The engine reads the trip, the tail, the departure, the arrival and the timing — nothing about who is on board — and resolves them into where this flight is going and when, so the cabin shows what is relevant there.
The mechanics
Beneath the passenger experience: a stable per-aircraft address, a per-trip link everywhere else, and a resolution rule that never guesses.
Resolution, step by step
Wrong-destination content is treated as a trust failure; no Member identity is required to resolve any of it.
The connectivity providers
The environments below are what private aviation already flies, stated as each provider publishes them. Meridian is the software and passenger-experience layer above that infrastructure. The relationship is architectural, not commercial: no provider relationship exists or is implied.
As published
Designed for full-cabin Wi-Fi, video conferencing, 4K streaming, VPN access and real-time collaboration.
Peak performance can exceed typical figures depending on plan and hardware. Figures are the currently published typical specification, not a measured average across a fleet.
As published
A software-based business aviation connectivity platform supporting over-the-air updates, content, configuration, analytics and passenger-facing digital services.
The strategically relevant point is not the fleet count on its own. It is that several thousand business aircraft already operate a software-centric passenger connectivity environment — one built for over-the-air configuration and content delivery rather than for a fixed installed image.
As published
Global Ka-band connectivity with an uncapped-speed architecture and support for high-bandwidth, multi-device cabin applications.
Viasat publicly describes JetXP as supporting HD video conferencing, large file transfers, cloud applications, streaming and real-time digital workflows in the cabin — a description of an application environment rather than a data pipe.
Above all of them
Meridian is designed as a connectivity-agnostic layer: the architectural objective is not to depend on a single provider, which keeps operator flexibility intact and keeps Meridian from becoming tied to one hardware ecosystem. Providers appear here in that architectural role only. No relationship exists or is implied, and provider approval is a pilot item.
Questions for the room
For the conversation with a connectivity provider, a router vendor, or an aviation IT team.
Can the passenger captive portal or landing page be customized?
Can an external cloud-hosted web application be used as part of the Wi-Fi onboarding experience?
Can the router redirect or deep-link passengers to an external URL?
Are portal-configuration APIs available?
Can aircraft tail number or network identity be exposed securely to an approved application?
Can trip or destination context be passed into the passenger experience?
Are there APIs for connectivity state, aircraft identity, or session context?
Can selected web content be cached locally onboard?
Does implementation require provider approval?
Would any integration require certification, STC changes, or aircraft modification?
What functionality is controlled by the operator versus the connectivity provider?
What functionality can be configured fleet-wide remotely?
These questions determine integration depth. They do not determine whether Meridian can exist — the baseline product remains a cloud software platform.
Security + privacy
Meridian is architected around contextual relevance rather than invasive tracking.
Contextual inputs — none of them identity
Destination intelligence does not require surveillance.
Principles
Passenger identity enters the system only where deliberately implemented and consented to — and never as a requirement for the destination experience itself.
The activation path
The only point at which a passenger becomes identifiable is the moment they ask for something. Everything before it runs on flight context, and everything measured afterwards is aggregated.
Origin, destination, date, season. No passenger identity.
Deterministic rules select eligible collections and formats.
The existing captive portal, in the passenger's own browser.
The passenger browses, or does not. Nothing is required.
The passenger asks for something. This is the only point data is created.
The request is routed to the right partner in the arrival market.
A dealer, broker, concierge or host acts on it.
Reported back for attribution. Aggregate, not individual.
Operator implementation flow
The first working session with an operator is a survey of what already exists — not a proposal to change it.
What we need from an operator
Deployment status
Capability-level precision: the demonstration platform is live today; live portal delivery and Meridian Control in production arrive with a pilot; multi-operator operations arrive with scale.
The interactive prototypes: passenger experience, route resolution and sample reports run end to end as a demonstration on seeded data.
Portal access on the operator's connectivity, provider approval, caching, live flight-plan ingestion, partner routing, passenger response and integration effort on a defined aircraft group.
Centralized content operations, multi-operator rules, multi-market fulfillment routing and campaign management across corridors.
Meridian plans no hardware and no avionics change. What it costs an operator in integration effort varies by connectivity configuration, and the only honest way to find out is on a small group of aircraft.
