United CEO urges airlines to improve passenger entertainment
By HELEN JUNG
AP Business Writer
9 September 2003
19:03
Associated Press Newswires
SEATTLE (AP) - Airlines need to look beyond cost-cutting and consider the features and entertainment services they should add to make flying fun for passengers, United Airlines chief executive Glenn Tilton said.
"The business will not always be about financial restructuring," said Tilton, who took over a year ago as chief executive of United and is steering the airline through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. "It's still about the customer, and it will always be about the customer."
Tilton made his remarks at the annual conference of the World Airline Entertainment Association in Seattle on Tuesday. The group includes companies that provide movies, music, games, Internet connections and other entertainment for airline passengers.
But entertainment and technology companies need to do their part to help airlines keep their finances in order, he said. Rather than forcing airlines to shoulder the costs of buying and installing entertainment systems, entertainment vendors should help find "creative new ways of working together" with airlines to share the costs - as well as revenue from passengers.
For example, he cited United's partnership with Verizon, in which the airline offers on-board e-mail services to travelers for a fee. The service, using Seattle-based Tenzing Communications' technology, runs over existing Verizon Airfone handsets already installed on the plane. United, Verizon and Tenzing all share in the prices charged to passengers to use the service.
It's scaled-down and less expensive than what United had been considering. United, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines all had committed in 2001 to buying high-speed Internet service from Connexion by Boeing, a unit of Chicago-based Boeing Co. But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the three airlines retreated to focus on fighting for their financial survival.
But Connexion by Boeing is making its own inroads. The company announced Tuesday that Japanese airline All Nippon Airways has signed a letter of intent to install the service on some of its airplanes. It is Connexion's fifth airline to install the network.
And Alaska Airlines announced a different approach. Rather than install a network on its airplanes, the Seattle-based carrier will start offering passengers on some longer flights portable devices that play movies and music and provide information. The devices, made by APS Inc., a Tacoma-based business started by an Alaska Airlines employee, will be free for first-class passengers and available for rental by others.
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