Fliers kick back with DVDs from InMotion
By Dan Reed, USA TODAY
Posted 4/12/2004 10:09 PM
Packing a couple of DVD movies in his laptop computer case before boarding a long flight has become a matter of life and death for New York public relations executive Peter Shankman.
Passengers pick up player, DVD at airport or have them mailed. DVD is watched in flight and then items returned to airport or by mail.
"If I didn't have my DVDs, I'd kill someone by hour seven" of a boring transoceanic flight, he jokes.
Like a growing number of road warriors, Shankman has geared up to meet his own travel entertainment needs. He bought his new laptop with a 15-inch screen specifically for better in-flight movie watching.
A new generation of frequent fliers who, like the 31-year-old Shankman, came of age in an era of 150-channel cable TV, the Internet and instant messaging are filling airplane seats these days. And they're expecting to be entertained. Meeting the demand is proving a challenge to financially strained airlines. (Related story: What's out there for bored fliers)
To a limited degree, cool new technologies are beginning to show up in airplanes to scratch the entertainment itch. Some airlines are meeting — or planning to meet — passengers' demands for entertainment and Internet connectivity with services like DirecTV Inflight, Connexion by Boeing, Verizon AirFone and a satellite TV product from Matsushita.
But those technologies are expensive. Given the poor financial health of the big network airlines, they're not likely to be widely available in the USA for some time, if ever.
Meanwhile, one simple — though perhaps interim — solution is taking shape. InMotion Pictures, a 5-year-old Jacksonville-based company, is positioning itself as the Blockbuster of the jet set.
For $5, travelers can rent a DVD for five days and play it in their laptops or personal DVD players. Or, for as little as $12, they can rent a DVD and a travel-size player, too.
New satellite-based communications technologies aim to give every passenger multiple channels of live TV or high-speed Internet connections for movies, games, Web surfing and e-mail at 35,000 feet.
But it's not yet clear that travelers will pay more — as much as $30 per flight more — to cover the cost of such systems, plus the extra fuel burned from hauling the extra weight.
It's no surprise, then, that the USA's big, financially struggling carriers are more than a little reluctant to invest in expensive equipment that might never pay for itself.
For giants like American, United and Delta, equipping all of their big jets could cost $250 million to $500 million, the airlines say.
Still, the big carriers know they need to do something. But what?
It is, says veteran travel marketing expert Thom Nulty of the Corporate Solutions Group, an important question. "How do they best meet the growing demand for better in-flight entertainment and information systems without bankrupting themselves?"
InMotion co-founder Barney Freedman and his partners are betting that the big airlines won't make a big investment in something that has never been a moneymaker. "They have never, ever made money from in-flight entertainment." Freedman says
Nulty agrees. Most fliers, he says, put good meals, frequent-flier points, entertainment and Internet connectivity in the "nice-to-have" category. Few will pay extra, he says.
"What most people want is a seat that travels 600 mph," he says.
Renting DVDs and players to travelers may not be a technologically elegant solution to the in-flight entertainment issue. But it has the advantage of being something with which travelers already are comfortable.
Freedman says InMotion's market research shows that frequent fliers are four times more likely to rent movies on the ground than people who don't fly much. So by tweaking the concept perfected by Blockbuster — a minority investor in InMotion — to meet the unique circumstances of travel, InMotion is tapping into what it figures is a ready-made market.
Instead of limiting rentals of hot, just-released DVDs for two nights, InMotion gives passengers five days on a basic rental. DVDs and recorders can be returned to the airport location where they were rented, dropped off at an InMotion location at the traveler's arrival airport or returned by mail using packaging provided by InMotion.
The concept appears to be catching on. InMotion, which Freedman says has been profitable for a couple of years, has locations in 20 airports in the USA. Another opens in May at Dallas/Fort Worth International, and more are in the works.
InMotion also hopes to enter partnerships with airlines to make it easier for travelers to rent DVDs and portable players.
No deals have been reached, but they could range from allowing InMotion to rent DVDs and players from mobile carts parked at boarding gates, to Internet links making it possible for passengers to reserve a DVD or player when they book a flight online.
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