Hello. Anyone who knows me well would know that in late June and early July I travelled to Canberra, Australia and Queenstown, New Zealand. I thought that before I forget to update this blog at all that I might talk about the In Flight Entertainment that was offered on the three various airlines that I flew with during my world wind trip.
Virgin Blue – Live2Air
I travelled by bus from Melbourne to Canberra, so there isn’t a lot to comment on there; however I flew with Virgin Blue on the return leg to Melbourne. On all Australian domestic routes on its Boeing 737 aircraft, Virgin Blue offer a service called Live2Air which provides you with access to 24 Foxtel channels in flight via satellite. Virgin Blue is apparently the first company outside the United States to provide such a service (which was pioneered by JetBlue?). This is provided via 8in monitors in the back of each seat with an accompanying credit card slot to the right.
Virgn Blue Live2Air monitor. Sourced from Gizmodo Australia.
While it does seem tacky (and I do agree with that), this is to allow you to pay the A$4.90 or A$9.90 (depending on the length of your flight) for the service. Virgin Blue also provide you with free earphones to listen with which I was pleased with though they weren’t the best earphones in the world (the previous time that I was on Virgin Blue on the Melbourne-Sydney route, you had to pay A$6 or so for a headset to listen to audio channels), but the jack provided to plug in your earphones will work with any pre existing iPod earphones and any other set of headphones you own without the need for adapters.
While this does not apply for customers sitting in the Premium Economy section, this is something that you would come to expect from a budget airline. My flight only lasted an hour, but with my mini cookies in hand (bought from the in flight menu) I was able to watch a cricket tour match live on Fox Sports 3 which was a memorable experience in itself.
Keeping signal interruptions in mind, the service is very handy especially if you have kids, or if you easily get bored on a long flight. The channels while limited cover most of the better offerings from Foxtel. If you can justify the extra cost, then I would recommend this service.
(NB: Virgin Blue. Why do you not allow hot drinks to be carried on your plane when you don’t offer any on your shorter flights? Where is the sense in that?)
Air New Zealand
Two days later I flew from Melbourne to Queenstown with Air New Zealand (a fitting choice considering the destination.) Before I start I would like to comment on the views that you get from the windows on the right hand side of the plane which I manage to capture and upload to YouTube.
Like on Virgin Blue, in each seat there is a monitor, and they do provide you with a headset (a separate jack is provided for your personal headphones); but the service is free and is on demand. Each monitor acts as a touchscreen to aid in navigating your way through the interface.
There is a vast selection of music, movies, television programs, games and so forth; but there were a few problems with the software. The Red Hat based system was twice reset on my screen because of it’s lack of responsiveness and it freezing while I was trying to play a mini golf game. The Airshow channel did not work at all which I was disappointed with (I was looking forward to seeing the famed moving map…)
During the flight I was able to watch a program on Queenstown (which was crap), several Flight of the Conchords episodes (which was good, especially the “I had sex with an Australian” episode), and a documentary entitled “The 200kg Kid”.
While I did enjoy the variety in programming offered, the interface was slow and problematic. Air New Zealand really need to fix the stability issues with the service before their IFE can really be called top class.
Jetstar
“Let’s fly JetStar!” (Matt trails off cursing in Italian). I think I would be even more scared when they start flying to Rome and Athens when they receive their Boeing 787 aircraft (whenever that will be…).
I will give credit where it is due, the leather seat provided by Jetstar was quite comfortable in some parts. The in flight menu was reasonable and very similar to the Virgin Blue menu. I ordered a sandwich, two cookies and a hot chocolate which barring the latter were very delicious.
However, I am here to talk about IFE systems and this is where Jetstar pails in comparison.
JetStar AirVOD - (CC 2009 'allrite')
I was unable to justify the A$10 or NZ$10 asking price to rent the device above. To start off with, there was only a small amount of content available, 95% of it geared to kids even though only 5% of it was marked “For Kids”. Secondly, it is a portable unit which takes up space on your food tray and you have to look down at to watch. I am aware that Polynesian Blue (a sister airline to Virgin Blue which do the Trans Tasman route) also offer a similar system, but unless the content is worthwhile (which it wasn’t), then it would be a waste of money to rent one of these devices.
If you do decide to go on an airline that offers this service, do check what is on offer before you fly. If there is nothing that you (or maybe your kids if you are travelling with some) would be interested in, get an iPod touch or classic and fill that with all the video content you would want to watch (which the guy next to me did).
Conclusion
To wrap up, Live2Air is a novel concept which does work well, but barring stability issues Air New Zealand take the cake. I do not know of what IFE systems on other airlines are like, so I can’t vouch for them (I heard that the Emirates system is pretty good though..)
July 19th, 2009 at 2:47 am
That’s pretty cool. I have noticed that more and more airlines are introducing in-flight television and even WiFi. This makes me want to go on an airplane someday soon.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:58 am
Yeah. Some of the technology they are rolling out on planes is exciting.
However I am not too hopeful of WiFi implementation anytime soon. I know that Qantas wanted to put it into their new A380 planes, but they never did it because they were concerned about people accessing inappropriate material iirc.