The newly unveiled suite allows visitors to experience cabin applications such as wi-fi, VoIP (voice over internet protocol), and IFE (in-flight entertainment) connectivity through a web portal, plus a variety of cockpit safety applications.

The demonstration area also allows the company to showcase a growing number of connectivity applications and capabilities, and allow customers to use the area to work with business partners and customer focus groups to refine the connected experience in a live environment using real systems.

Alan Pellegrini, head of Thales IFE Systems business said: "Connected IFE is the new direction for this market, more and more airlines are coming to us asking for this capability because they want to set themselves apart from the competition and vastly improve the in-flight experience for their passengers."

For more on this and the week's top news stories pick up Friday's Crawley Times.