Exploring the Tech of In-Flight Entertainment
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.
From Wired Magazine’s playlist from issue 16.06…
Imagine: An airline you look forward to flying. Flights on VA are inexpensive (first class is almost affordable), and in our experience, lines are comparatively short. Hungry? Press a button on your seat-back console and a sandwich arrives. Bored? Play Doom. Think the guy in 18B is cute? Text him. Here’s to a company whose services feel like they were designed by actual humans for actual humans.
For those who have flown Virgin America, would you agree?
Flickr user Crashworks has some excellent pics of Virgin America’s RED IFE system in action. Below are some samples.
in-seat chat
games
television
maps
power
Gogo is the internet, on a plane. Gogo (powered by Aircell) enables email access, web browsing, and VPN access at mobile broadband speeds, using a devices built-in Wi-Fi capability. Gogo is launching in 2008 on select flights on American Airlines and Virgin America. The Gogo site includes a map of premium routes that will be offering the Gogo in-flight service. Pricing is not mentioned. You can also sign-up to a mailing list to be kept advised as Gogo adds routes and airlines.
The big question is how much are you willing to pay to be connected while in-flight?
Virgin America and Revision3, the groundbreaking Internet TV network built for the web generation, are partnering to bring original, cutting-edge web-based television programming to guests on the next generation carrier’s flights. Revision3 programming on Virgin America will make its debut this March and will be available on the airline’s flights to New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Las Vegas, San Diego and Seattle.
Revision3 on the Red™ Inflight Entertainment System will launch with a unique array of broadcast quality web-based shows, including Revision3 favorites like Diggnation, Tekzilla, The Totally Rad Show, Web Drifter, XLR8R TV and The Digg Reel.
According to Henry Harteveldt, an industry analyst at Forrester Research who recently issued a report on the subject, the answer is that we’re about to see a sea change that will likely bring Internet on board most major U.S. carriers.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that it’s not going to happen overnight. “It will probably be two years or so before we see the vast majority of aircraft in the U.S. with this,” Harteveldt said. “But I do expect it will be on just about every airline.”
via CNET.com
Artur Bergman of O’Reilly shares his experience on one of Virgin America’s inaugural flights:
Doom
In-Seat Chat
The in-flight entertainment system (IFE) is really cool. I ended up chatting with Xeni, listening to music and playing Doom (on a plane!). For the journeymap, they use Google Maps.
via O’Reilly
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