For about a decade now, in-flight entertainment has been taking a new shape. Airlines have been moving away from full-fledged seatback IFE, which involves fitting screens and IFE boxes on an aircraft, to fitting small units on aircraft that stream entertainment. You can use your laptops, tablets, or phones to consume the content. After Jet Airways and Vistara joined this bandwagon in 2018, we are almost ready for Air India to roll out streaming IFE, as this website has been expecting for weeks now.
Air India is all set to roll out Bluebox streaming IFE solutions on widebody and narrowbody aircraft.
Bluebox Aviation is one of the prominent players in streaming IFE solutions and has partnered with Vistara for many years. Vistara trialled streaming IFE in 2015, and in 2018, the solution was fully rolled out. Vistara customers on the A320neo fleet can access the IFE with their personal electronic devices (PED). There is seatback IFE on the A321neo and B787-9s.
Air India has been inducting 20 new A320neo and 4 A321neo aircraft over the past 16 months. However, none of these aircraft have inflight entertainment provision. One of the first questions asked when the new three-cabin layout was announced was if it had entertainment. Even though a two-hour flight does not need IFE, a five-hour flight on the same aircraft does. At the recent Airline Interiors Expo, my question about streaming IFE products was if AI would select them. However, no one volunteered the information.
Now, it has come to light that Air India has partnered with Bluebox Aviation to roll out their IFE product, Bluebox WOW, on their aircraft. LiveFromALounge has reviewed internal documentation to this effect.
What seems surprising is that streaming entertainment will not just be provided on the A320s but also the Boeing 777 and the Boeing 787 fleet.This should perhaps be a stop-gap measure for the airline, while they put these widebodies through a nose-to-tail retrofit and install a new seatback IFE on these aircraft.
The selection of Bluebox WOW makes sense, given that it is already fitted out on Vistara aircraft, so reliability data is available. Additionally, it will be cost-saving not to replace the hardware on these Vistara-inherited equipment. Whether or not a trial will be conducted remains to be seen. For instance, IndiGo is conducting a trial on board some aircraft for its prospective IFE solution.
Bottomline
Air India is all set to announce the rollout of Bluebox Aviation-powered streaming IFE on its narrowbody and widebody fleets. The airline will install it on the A320s, Boeing 787s, and Boeing 777s in the coming months. This would be at par with VistaraWorld streaming IFE option, which is already on board Vistara aircraft.
What do you think of the move from Air India to bring IFE on their aircraft?
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