Food and drink sales facilitated by Red are the foundation of the airline’s ancillary revenue effort indicated Charles Ogilvie, Director of Inflight Entertainment & Partnerships at Virgin America. Ogilvie said “We charge for everything except water and soda, so we make money from food and drink, and also from things like premium IFE content.” Virgin America is now earning thousands of dollars a day from onboard sales of food and other offerings.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Crashwork
US Airways announced that it will no longer be offering in-flight movies on domestic US flights starting in November. The move was announced as a fuel saving measure…at 500 pounds per plane, the in-flight entertainment systems weighed too much for the carrier to justify leaving them on board. The carrier said it will save $10 million per year in fuel costs by getting rid of the movies. Given the fuel crunch its hard to argue the move but unless all the other carriers follow suit why would you choose to fly US Airways? Unless of course you usually bring your own entertainment (BYOE) via iPod/iPhone when flying.
Inflight Online news reports on progress being made by two big names in passenger broadband. Aircell which is rolling out the Gogo in-flight WiFi services has secured additional funding that will be used to keep the company afloat during the roll-out of their service. Panasonic has announced VT iDirect as the source of the satellite IP router technology that will be used for their Ku-band satellite broadband service, eXConnect, expected to launch in the first half of next year.
Engadget reports that American Airlines will be testing the Gogo in-flight WiFi service on unspecified round-trip flight from New York’s JFK and Los Angeles’ LAX beginning on June 25. The service will be free for passengers during the testing, but will eventually run users $12.95 for flights greater than three hours and $9.95 for trips under that threshold.
The Wall Street Journal’s technology columnist Walt Mossberg takes a test flight on a business jet equipped with Aircell’s Gogo in-flight WiFi service to give the service a test run. It is a data only service and he used Dell and Apple laptops, a BlackBerry, a Windows Mobile phone and an iPhone (all WifI equipped) to perform all the most common online tasks.
Gogo launches in 2008, likely in July, on select flights on American Airlines and later in the year on Virgin America. The Gogo service will cost a flat fee of $12.95 for flights of three hours or longer, and $9.95 for shorter trips.
Video: Mossberg on Gogo
Following in Singapore’s contrails, United has announced that it would become the first U.S. airline to offer in-flight iPod and iPhone connectivity. The carrier will offer the service as part of its in-flight entertainment system, letting users charge and connect their devices to the in-seat 15.4-inch widescreen LCD monitors.
WSJ.com reports that JetBlue’s LiveTV unit will buy Verizon’s Airfone network which includes 100 air-to-ground US communication towers and Airfone’s corporate and government aviation clients on Jan. 01. This news comes on the heals of JetBlue’s announcement to expand it’s BetaBlue service of in-flight email.
