July 23, 2007; Seattle – THALES expects to be earning $500 million a year from the supply of its TopSeries IFE system for Boeing 787s by 2009-10.

Speaking in Seattle today at the company’s Aerospace Services Worldwide avionics and IFE repair facility, North America business development VP Sergio von Borries said that Thales’ content per TopSeries-equipped aircraft was valued at as much as $3-4 million, most of it attributable to the IFE installation.

Thales’ Irvine, California-headquartered IFE operation has been selected to supply TopSeries i5000 by more than three-quarters of the carriers that have announced a decision on inflight entertainment equipment. The system is pitched against Panasonic’s eX2, which Boeing is also offering as a seller-furnished equipment (SFE) option on the new long-hauler.

The total Thales content list on the 787 can run to more than 2,000 individual items and systems, including LED mood lighting from German subsidiary Diehl Aerospace, flight controls, power generation equipment and the integrated standby flight display.

Boeing has received orders for 683 787s to date and plans to be delivering 9-11 aircraft a month from 2009. “The programme represents a huge logistical challenge for us,” said von Borries. “We have to supply system components not only to Boeing but also to major structure providers such as Spirit Aerosystems in Kansas and Alenia/Vought Aircraft Industries, with facilities in Italy and Texas.”

Thales is currently working to integrate TopSeries with the seats from six different manufacturers that Boeing has named as SFE options on the 787, and it is also readying itself to integrate any seats that airlines may select on a buyer-furnished equipment (BFE) basis for their premium classes.

von Borries is Thales North America’s key amount manager for Boeing, charged with raising the supplier’s status to that of a trusted partner to the airframer. “With that in mind, we are now organising ourselves around Boeing,” he said.

One of the most obvious signs of that ambition was the move last September of Thales’ Seattle facility to a former Boeing training building close to the airframer’s Renton narrowbody production plant. Measuring 65,000 sq ft, with a further 102,000 sq ft available for growth, it houses 170 employees. Of these, around 40 are dedicated to IFE work, with an estimated workload for this year of around 10,000 repairs.

The building is also due to be home to Thales’ new Cabin Systems Concept Development Demonstrator facility. This is seen as complementary to the cabin connectivity “showroom” that Thales UK plans to open next April in its new £200 million office and laboratory development at Crawley in southern England. While the Seattle lab is primarily for development purposes, the Crawley operation is designed to give potential customers hands-on experience of the company’s integrated IFE and Inmarsat-based satellite broadband offerings. The nearby Raynes Park, London, facility was recently designated the centre of excellence for all of Thales’ connectivity work, which centres on the TopFlight Inmarsat L-band system.

Describing TopFlight as “the most advanced satcoms system in the world,” von Borries said that it had already been certificated and deployed on the Boeing 777 and that Thales hoped to see it aboard other aircraft in the manufacturer’s product range.

Commenting on Boeing’s decision earlier this year to drop plans for wireless IFE in the 787, von Borries said: “While wireless is off the table for the moment, we still have it in the back of our minds. It’s not out of the question that it could figure in a 787 mid-life update a few years down the line.”