BYO in-flight movies?

By Nick Heath on 07 July 2009

Airlines should scrap in-flight entertainment systems because they cannot compete with the thousands of songs and scores of movies that can be stored on modern media players, according to an aviation expert.

Should airlines junk their entertainment systems? If so, what should take its place?

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The pace at which airlines can update the selection of film, music, games and technology offered to passengers is being outstripped by constant advances in storage and functionality on media players, according to Professor John Hansman, director of the International Technology Center for Air Transport at MIT.

"When an aeroplane is outfitted it is expected to last 10 to 12 years so, as a consequence, most of the in-flight entertainment devices are obsolete within maybe two years," Hansman told the Sita Air Transport IT Summit in Cannes this week.

"The time scale for a change in [consumer] technology is probably about a year."

He said airlines should instead focus on providing the elements necessary to allow users to access media stored on on-board storage or the internet through their own devices.

"In five to 10 years' time a personal device may hold 500 movies. Airlines just have to make sure that they provide interoperability with those things," he said.

"The airline will need to provide power and communication bandwidth for travellers to use these personal devices within the aeroplane."

Wireless web access is already available or soon to be deployed, across a number of airlines, including British Airways and Ryanair, both of which use a system from OnAir, a joint venture between Airbus and Sita.

CEO of OnAir Benoit Debains said at present, however, the two-channel 432Kbps link provided by OnAir is too slow for streaming media from the internet and said adding an additional aerial was unattractive to airlines because of extra weight and drag.

Topics: internet, wi-fi, on-board entertainment, divx, ipod, cache, cms, lib, home, mkdir

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Comments (5)

  • Cozzie commented on 08/07/2009 22:17 Report abuse

    SRG: This expert is probably fully aware and as to quote you "business class and first class". It is going to become more common though but I dont see the need to scrap it as per the vote reflect. People do have to realize it is not realistic in the near future to have connections the speed of your ADSL2+ connecting available to each seat.

  • Fred commented on 08/07/2009 12:46 Report abuse

    Airlines should continue to offer a video screen service with new release movies, TV and music. If they add an ipod type connection for those who want to watch their own content that's fine too. Most passengers also want to see new content. It's not really a matter of technology but of keeping the content updated. With regard to connecting equipment though - its best to keep it simple - not everybody wants to listen to a chinese language movie played on a laptop by the passenger next to them at full volume. There are enough disturbances on planes already.

  • SRG commented on 08/07/2009 10:36 Report abuse

    Apparently this "expert" isn't aware that United Airlines already offers the ability to plug in one's iPod and use the business and first class seat equipment to display the video and play the audio.

  • anonymous commented on 07/07/2009 21:57 Report abuse

    how about just a universal adapter to power laptops and media devices.

  • Lore commented on 07/07/2009 19:10 Report abuse

    Maybe for display of video, but who the hell would want to use their headphones anyway?

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