Those questions nagged at Airshow Inc., the leading provider of passenger flight information systems, before it introduced the first live TV aired aboard a corporate jet just two years ago with its Airshow TV product.

"We were somewhat apprehensive," admits Airshow president Dennis Ferguson. "Would it be accepted? Would it grow?

" The answer is a sales tally of 60 units since then for top-end aircraft such as the Gulfstream V, Global Express, Boeing Business Jet, and Falcon family.

"It's been very successful," Ferguson says. Users include sports team owners and executives who want immediate access to financial news.

Airshow is exhibiting in a prime position near the entrance to NBAA, with its biggest display ever.

The company recently moved to expand live TV access beyond the U.S., with agreements for live programming in Canada and Europe. It has negotiations in the works for additional geographical areas including Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia.

Its current push is to bring more e-mail and Internet access to the flying executive. Service is available now via Airshow Network `99, but is thus far limited by technology.

Airshow's most popular feature is for pilots: the ability to beam into the cockpit current Doppler radar weather maps of their route and destination, as well as PIREPS, Notams and satellite weather images. The company's information systems are flying on more than 3,500 corporate aircraft, and with more than 100 airlines worldwide.

Acquisitions of such companies as Pacific Systems in June 1998, and the Flight TECH product line earlier this year, have moved Airshow into the role of integrated cabin management systems for audio and visual systems, including custom-plated switch panels, touchscreen control systems, and amplifiers.

Airshow was designated a preferred supplier of integrated cabin management systems for the BBJ by Garrett Aviation Services this past January, and a month later its Airshow TV live programming system was offered as an option by Dassault Falcon Jet.

Airshow's main product lines for the corporate market are: Airshow TV, the world's first live Direct Broadcast Satellite TV programming for business jets, beaming in the same channels viewed in millions of homes; Airshow Network `99, which allows e-mail and Internet-like access to worldwide financial news; and for the cockpit, national, regional and destination real-time Doppler radar and weather maps; and Airshow Entertainer, a self-contained, single-unit entertainment and passenger information system for small and medium-sized business jet and turboprop aircraft. The 12-pound Entertainer unit contains movies, a multi-disc CD changer, a flight atlas with worldwide moving maps, and customized passenger briefings. It does not offer live programming, e-mail or live financial information.

Entertainment screens can be customized.

To date Airshow TV has been available only over land, and only in the U.S. With new supplier agreements and a retrofittable box that accepts the differing TV signals of various international systems, it will become possible to tune into live TV over most continents (but not over oceans where satellite coverage is slim.) This overwater gap is filled to a limited extent by Network `99 information services, explained Ferguson.

Today, true inflight e-mail and Internet access is not possible as bandwidth limitations restrict the amount of information that can pass between the aircraft and the ground. Airshow's solution has been to relay company e-mail through Airshow's 24-hour ground station, and to transmit customized financial data at regular intervals over a narrow bandwidth onto a hard disk cache on the aircraft to be perused at the passenger's leisure, making the information "almost-live."

No one has yet made possible high bandwidth access to an aircraft, Ferguson says.

"In one to three years we might have technological breakthroughs in high bandwidth satellite TV antennae and satellites that allow us to use satellite technology for wireless Internet access," he told Show News. "Our intent is to be right there. Today's solution may not be as elegant as it can be on the Internet, but the more we do now, the more we stay ahead."

In the meantime Airshow is implementing technology and offering it to customers as it becomes available, he says.

Airshow is also seeking strategic partnerships to leverage its resources as a provider of inflight information services. "We're not limiting that to TV or the Internet," Ferguson says.