Low-costs in IFE stampede
January 7, 2004 – US low-cost carriers are piling into inflight entertainment as never before as it dawns on managements that IFE is becoming a service fundamental rather than a frill for budget travellers.
Atlanta-based AirTran Airways has announced that it will offer XM Satellite Radio digital audio free of charge to its passengers. New York’s JetBlue is adding XM, two pay-per-view film channels and a further 12 free DirecTV channels to its existing LiveTV offering. And Ted, the United Airlines low-cost that enters service next month, will have a multichannel IFE offering dubbed Ted TV.
AirTran will equip all of its Boeing 717s and 737s to offer the new service at every seat, starting this summer and aiming to complete installations by the end of the year. A pair of AirTran’s business-class seats outfitted with XM technology is currently on display at the XM Satellite Radio booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
XM Satellite Radio offers listeners in the home, in cars and in the air a total of 101 digital audio channels covering live news, sport, weather, talk and a wide range of music programming.
Explaining his company’s decision to upgrade its IFE content to include XM Radio and additional TV channels, JetBlue chief executive David Neeleman said in an interview earlier this week that with ever more carriers matching its cheap domestic fares, it had become increasingly important to offer unique service, and that entertainment was one way to do that.
Neeleman described the upgrades as preferable to adding other amenities such as food, which he vowed never to offer on JetBlue. He said that supplying a “soggy sandwich” to each passenger would cost the airline $20 million a year. Other cost-control measures include sticking to the existing headsets, which Neeleman said cost the airline about 20 cents each. Passengers looking for better audio quality should bring their own equipment, he said.
The JetBlue link gives XM Radio access to some 12 million listeners whom it hopes will one day become subscribers. The company currently has about 1.2 million subscribers.
The two pay-per-view channels – one for first-run films, the other for classics – and additional TV channels will be provided by News Corporation through its Fox Entertainment Group subsidiary. The service will cost about $3 per film, payable by in-seat credit-card swipe, and will break even at that price level, according to Neeleman. The range of new entertainment is due to be available across the JetBlue fleet by the end of the year.
United Airlines’ Ted will set out to beguile passengers by combining a multichannel entertainment offering called Ted TV with its own brand of beer and colourful headsets when it launches service between Denver and the West Coast and Florida next month.
Meantime, the low-cost daddy of them all, Southwest Airlines, continues to sit on the fence, formally holding out against all embellishments while studying whether to offer inflight entertainment. The main criterion is cost, according to company spokesman Ed Stewart. Unlike the newer carriers, which began or will start service with IFE systems already installed, Southwest would have to retrofit its Boeing 737s.
“We’re looking at the systems but we’re by no means saying we’re going to do it,” Stewart said. Should they prove too expensive, he said, Southwest would stick with its traditional inflight entertainment - jokes from the crew.
