American Airlines does away with seat-back entertainment

By B.R.

IT IS becoming a dilemma for any airline ordering a new batch of planes: should it ask for entertainment screens to be fitted into the back of every seat? Most aviation watchers expect that the technology will become obsolete at some point in the coming years, as more people fly with their own devices. But it is not passé yet. Anyone flying long-haul still expects to find a tiny, fuzzy monitor a few inches from their nose.

Nonetheless, over the lifetime of a new plane, entertainment built into headrests will come to look quaint. So American Airlines has decided to get ahead of the times. Its new order of 100 Boeing 737s, which should start to enter service by the end of the year, will not have seat-back entertainment. Instead passengers will be able to stream films on their phones, tablets and laptops using the plane’s Wi-Fi.

This seems like a sensible move. Ninety per cent of its passengers, reckons the airline, already carry a smart device onboard. In-flight entertainment systems cost around $3m to install on every jetliner. Shunning them not only saves on that initial outlay, but also on fuel costs. All that underfloor wiring and modified seating adds bulk to the plane, so it uses more fuel. (American Airlines once calculated that the weight saving merely of switching pilots’ paper-based flight manuals to iPads would save it $1.2m a year across its fleet.)

The airline says that passengers will be able to stream shows from its library for free. They will be charged only for logging onto the internet. That currently costs $16 plus tax for a day pass. Still, some flyers will spy a racket. Nearly all airlines’ business models involve charging for services that were at one point included in the cost of the ticket. It is difficult to believe that video-streaming won’t go the way of checked bags and peanuts and be treated as an add-on in due course. What's more, expect airlines to make a tidy sum renting out tablets to passengers who do not have their own.

There is also the question of reliability. Internet on planes can be horribly slow. To solve this, American Airlines is replacing its current provider, Gogo, which offers internet via masts on the ground, with Viasat, which connects through satellites. It hopes that this will make the service fast enough to allow uninterrupted video streaming to flyers. It remains to be seen if that goal is met.

For most travellers there is an easy way around such problems. Downloading films and television programmes onto an iPad has already become a pre-trip ritual for many—even when flying on a plane equipped with seat-back entertainment. The screens are usually better, and you have the choice of watching exactly what you want with no buffering. There is also no need to endure censorship of monkey-fighting swear words and naked buttocks.

So are there any downsides? On long-haul flights especially, customers will need to be able to plug devices into a charger. And making enough space on your seat-table for both an iPad and a tray of chickenorpasta will be challenging. Expect plenty of tablets to fall victim to spilled glasses of wine. Even so, the benefits for both customer and airline surely outweigh the problems.