In-flight entertainment
During the early years of air travel in the 1920s, in-flight entertainment took the form of movies that were initially shown on a large screen.
Design issues for IFE include system safety, cost efficiency, software reliability, hardware maintenance, and user compatibility.
[2] The film The Lost World was shown to passengers of an Imperial Airways flight in April 1925 between London (Croydon Airport) and Paris.
[3] Eleven years later, in 1932, the first in-flight television called 'media event' was shown on a Western Air Express Fokker F.10 aircraft.
In 1961, David Flexer of Inflight Motion Pictures developed the 16mm film system using a 25-inch reel for a wide variety of commercial aircraft.
[2] Interviewed by the New Yorker in 1962, Mr Flexner said, "an awful lot of ingenuity has gone into this thing, which started from my simply thinking one day, in flight, that air travel is both the most advanced form of transportation and the most boring.”[6] Amerlon Productions, a subsidiary of Inflight, produced at least one film, Deadlier Than the Male, specifically for use on airplanes.
In 1988, the Airvision company introduced the first in-seat audio/video on-demand systems using 2.7 inches (69 mm) LCD technology for Northwest Airlines.
[citation needed]In 1996 and 1997, Swissair and Alitalia introduced the first digital in-flight entertainment systems aboard its aircraft manufactured by US-based company Interactive Flight Technologies, marking a notable development in passenger amenities, that would generate additional revenue for the airline.
These systems featured individual touchscreen displays integrated into seat armrests, allowing passengers to access various entertainment including pay-per-view movie library, music, games, and flight details such as a moving map, speed, and altitude.
[14] One way for the intended IFE system to meet this regulatory requirement is for it to be independent from the aircraft's main power source and processor.
Certain U.S. design approvals for IFE may be directly accepted in other countries, or may be capable of being validated, under existing bilateral airworthiness safety agreements.
Cutting production costs may be achieved by anything from altering the housing for personal televisions, to reducing the amount of embedded software in the in-flight entertainment processor.
[17] A moving-map system is a real-time flight information video channel broadcast through to cabin project/video screens and personal televisions (PTVs).
[20] FlightPath3D was chosen by Norwegian as the moving-map on their new fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners, running on Panasonic's Android based touch-screen IFE system.
The headphone plugs are usually only compatible with the audio socket on the passenger's armrest (and vice versa), and some airlines may charge a small fee to obtain a pair.
In-flight entertainment systems have been made compatible with XM Satellite Radio and with iPods, allowing passengers to access their accounts or bring their own music, along with offering libraries of full audio CDs of different genres.
Some airlines also present news and current affairs programming, which are often pre-recorded and delivered in the early morning before flights commence.
PTVs are operated via an in-flight Management System which stores pre-recorded channels on a central server and streams them to PTV equipped seats during flight.
For example, Singapore Airlines passengers on some flights have access to a number of Super Nintendo games as part of its KrisWorld entertainment system.
More modern aircraft are now allowing Personal Electronic Devices (PEDs) to be used to connect to the on board in-flight entertainment systems.
Closed captioning is capable of streaming various text languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Spanish, and Russian.
The AVOD systems on El Al aircraft feature an application that shows the current Zmanim (Jewish prayer times) throughout the flight, with a compass pointing in the direction of Jerusalem[29] IFE has been expanded to include in-flight connectivity—services such as Internet browsing, text messaging, cell phone usage (where permitted), and emailing.
After Connexion was discontinued, other providers emerged to deliver in-flight broadband communication to airlines—notably satellite-based by Row 44, OnAir and AeroMobile, and air-to-ground connectivity via a cellular signal by Aircell.
Industry expectations were that by the end of 2011 thousands of planes flying in the US would offer some form of in-flight broadband communication to passengers.
Functionalities may include allowing passengers to chat with each other, compete against each other in provided games, talk to flight attendants, request and pay for food or drinks, and have full access to the Internet and email.
[31] In the Airbus A380 aircraft, data communication via satellite system allows passengers to connect to live Internet from the individual IFE units or their laptops via the in-flight Wi-Fi access.
[35] As a general rule, mobile phone use while airborne is usually not just prohibited by the carrier, but also by regulatory agencies in the relevant jurisdiction (e.g. FAA and FCC in the US).
[37] Ryanair had previously aimed to become the first airline to enable mobile phone use in flight, but did not launch its system commercially until February 2009.
As of 2024[update], SpaceX and OneWeb were testing low Earth-orbit satellites, with Amazon seeking approval for more, and other companies were working on HAPS prototypes.
[citation needed] Aircraft-based connectivity upstarts including Simi Valley, AWN and Aeronet Global Communications Services had been reducing operations as of 2019.
