IFE – European Charters

Yeah, I know… that’s kind of why I put when the flights were, so as to make clear that they could have been updated since…

Certainly I know that AF’s A330’s were delivered with PTV’s, and AF were also installing PTV’s on their A340 and 777 fleets when I flew with them (but it kind of hacked me off to to find an article in the Inflight magazine telling me what I could look forward to, whilst forcing me to watch a Woody Allen film on the main screen.).

However, we’re talking about charter flights of less than 5 hours, and I don’t see how PTV’s can be justified for that expense.

Wys asked about PTV’s on BA flights, I don’t think they have any PTV’s in World Traveller on anything but their 747 and 777 fleets, certainly the 767’s it was decided not to bother installing PTV in’s WT, although they are there in Club World.

The new batch of Airbus aircraft (ie not the orignal 4 A320-100’s and 5 (I think?) A320-200’s that were relics from B-Cal) have the LCD screens every four or 5 rows, though, so you may get IFE on those.

the 319’s use them, as do British Mediterranean’s Franchise A321’s (although I haven’t been on a BA A321).

UA long haul airliners have DO have PTV’s at least on international routes.
Either 777 or 767-200/300ER ‘s

ok, maybe, mongu, I don’t know.

Wys, a list of airlines I’ve been on with PTVs…

BA Boeing 767 (albeit in Club World), 6 years ago, LGW-PIT, 9 hour flight

a list of airlines I’ve been on with TV screens at intervals in the Cabin…

US Boeing 757 (6 years ago), PIT-SFO, 4 and a half hour flight
UA Boeing 757 (6 years ago), SFO-EWR, 5 hour flight
AF Airbus A340 (3 years ago), CDG-YYZ-CDG, 8/7 hour flights
SR Airbus A321 (2 years ago), ZRH-LHR, 2 hour flight*
SR Airbus A320 (2 years ago), LHR-ZRH, 2 hour flight*
BA Airbus A319 (last year), LHR-GLA-LHR, 1 hour flight**
BA Boeing 757 (last year), GLA-LHR, 1 Hour flight***

a list of airlines I’ve flown with a big screen at the front of every cabin…
BA Boeing 747-136 (6 years ago), EWR-LHR, 5 hour flight

* the Swissair Airbusses, while having tvs, didn’t have headphone jacks, so it was a visual only experience. mainly showed BBC wildlife programmes with David Attenborough.
** BA Airbus, again, no headphone jacks, only used for saftey demonstration (commentary via PA).
*** BA 757, surprised me as having tvs, I asked the FA, and she said she hadn’t seen them before, either, but that presumably it was a LGW based aircraft normally used for flights to Moscow and other medium haul destinations. Tv’s not used at all, though, unfortunately.

ok, it’s not a huge range of flights, but apart from those, the longest flight I’ve been on was a BA BAC1-11 from ZRH to BHX thirteen years ago, which was never really going to be a candidate for IFE… 😉

Originally posted by Bhoy
Ads can be targeted at individuals? you suggesting each aircraft takes off with 230 different videos, 1 tailored with ads for each passenger?

not a chance… and you can turn a PTV off if you don’t want to watch it.

No.

Each passenger sees a selection of ads, some relating to him/her and some just general ads for Coke, or whatever. I guess a total of about 100 ads for the whole aircraft. Would easily fit on a DVD.

Any good TV exec (apart from in the US!) will tell you that too many ads is counterproductive – you want enough to make it pay, bot few enough not to annoy people or spoil viewing pleasure.

Also, I do believe jetBlue at least have adopted “my” idea with inflight ads on the PTVs.

As a rule, no.

Only the 747 and 777 fleets have PTVs, though maybe 767s do also.

This is not a smart alec reply but a straight question as I don’t know the answer –

If you do a 4 hour flight on a typical BA flight do you get a seat back TV?

Ads can be targeted at individuals? you suggesting each aircraft takes off with 230 different videos, 1 tailored with ads for each passenger?

not a chance… and you can turn a PTV off if you don’t want to watch it.

Bhoy,

1. Don’t know about you, but TV’s hung from the ceiling never grab my attention. I don’t watch them really. But a PTV stares me in the face for the whole flight, if I want it to or not!

2. Ads screened through PTV’s can be targeted at individuals. The advertisers see it as an “airborne mailshot” by tailoring what is shown according to known data on each passenger – gathered from his credit card records when he paid, or from the airline CRM system.

Also the actual cost of the system is something that could be expected to be recovered over a year or two.

Yes, but bearing in mind this topic started by wanting PTVs on flights of less than 5 hours. Most of these flights will going to destinations within the European Union where duty free cigarettes and alcohol are no longer available, so it seems a little pointless.

Mongu, not sure about your point about advertisers…

Surely they’d pay the same to have their ads broadcast over a communal telly hanging down from the cabin roof than for a PTV…

And as far as costs go… the airlines would have to replace all the seats in all their aircraft, and incur additional maintenace charges, surely? :S

Frankly, I’ve never flown Charter, but I don’t see why Charter airlines should be looking to install PTV’s on their shorthaul fleet, when even for many longhaul scheduled flights, they’re the exception rather than the rule in Economy.

T5, the only reason a charter airline would install TV’s is in order to increase “duty free sales etc”.

I think the main aim of the charters is to get Personal TVs on their aircraft before even considering such things as ordering duty free etc from your seats!

Charters class a long haul flight as something which is airborne for 5.5 hours or something like that. Perhaps if PTVs were introduced, these airlines should assign aircraft to particular routes and then fit TVs in seatbacks of those flying one of the “long-haul” routes so those flying charters and not getting their own, personal entertainment can enjoy the flight more. With flights to Florida, The Caribbean and Mexico which are all at least 8 hours away, it’s a long time to go and to be forced to watch what the airline wants you to.

Personal TVs can be quite a bore though. You get a brilliant film on one channel and find that on the rest is some ancient BBC documentary that you saw on the television about 3 years beforehand. I watched “The Bourne Identity” twice in a row with United last year – the other 10-15 channels were quite pathetic.

So on the other hand, PTVs may not be too good anyway. The passengers think they are getting choice, but what is being shown is not too great – one episode out of a series of Cold Feet as an example. When this series was shown on TV a couple of years beforehand and the episode you are seeing is the second or third of six, it’s not much good..!! When sharing entertainment and watching one channel chosen by the airline, you often get good quality entertainment and not the random stuff you get to fill the channels on flights with PTVs. However, JMC made me watch “Yellow Submarine” on a 2000 flight to the Dominican Republic and that killed me.

I actually think there is something wrong with the mindset of some of the senior people in charterland for not installing seatback flatscreens!

1. They are not an expense, they are an asset. This comes from a number of rationales:

a. Advertisers (even in today’s downtrodden market) will pay significant amounts for a captive audience of 150-200 people for 8 hours (4 hours there, 4 hours back).

b. Inflight sales can be increased if the pax can order products (and reserve hire cars, or whatever) in their own time, from their own seat. Buying from a trolley that whizzes down the aisle is a method which minimises revenue, not maximises it.

c. Inflight gambling or pay per view TV could easily be installed as an option, particularly if the aircraft has online connectivity, such as the Boeing Connexion system.

d. And of course don’t forget that it rarely hurts to keep people amused or occupied on flights.

e. There will be no immedicate impact on an airline’s profits due to the cost of installing the system. This is because of an accounting standard called FRS15 which allows the company to describe expenditure on fixed assets as capital expenditure and not revenue expenditure. It’s usualy called capitalising the expenditure. The equipment will need to be depreciated over its useful life, but this will typically be at least 4 or 5 years rather than 1 year.

If I remember rightly, 10 years ago it cost Virgin over a million pounds per aircraft to fit what is now a very basic seatback TV system.

Middle Eastern Airlines (MEA) have PTV’s on their brand new Airbus A321 aircraft which are used on short and medium haul routes – around the 5 hour mark so it is possible. Look at JetBlue aswell. Maybe 1 day there will be PTV’s on charter services but I think theres a long time for that yet

Regards
dan777

Yeah, that’s not a bad piece of kit – I’ve come across it a lot fairly recently. Airtours used it on their A330 aircraft, United on their 777s and British Airways on their A319 – this was the only thing they showed for the whole flight.

I much prefer the Airshow display, which shows the position of the aircraft, height, outside temperature, length of flight time remaining etc. I’ve only seen this on Boeing 747-400 and 767 aircraft, but I know other bigger types have it, I just haven’t been on them. It really annoys me when the Airshow is replaced by some crap (usually) film or “comedy” programme. Last time I flew on Air New Zealand you had no choice but to watch the bloody awful film they were showing because all the cabin lights were turned off, no one was allowed to look through the windows and the audio channel was damned awful. Being forced to sit through a 10 1/2 hour flight with the window blind closed was sheer purgatory, believe me. I normally spend the whole flight looking through the window, and flying over places like Iceland and Greenland is normally a real treat. Thankfully the pilot allowed me up onto the flight deck and I was able to look through the window up there and see the mountains of Greenland.

I don’t see the need for PTVs on charter airlines operating flights around the 4 to 5 hour mark. This would be an enormously expensive task to fit each aircraft with anything from 150 to 250 televisions. Then the long haul fleet would have to have them too – The 767s and A330s which hold a fair few passengers more than the 757s and A321s more commonly used on the short-medium haul routes. I know Britannia’s largest aircraft is the 767-300, some seating 315 passengers with others seating 328. To think how many aircraft they have and how many passengers they seat altogether, that’s a lot of cash and it would have to come from our pockets when they put their ticket prices up.

Charters show entertainment on evenly distributed televisions around the cabin – I think that’s a fair enough deal.

But they would be nice :p

Originally posted by wysiwyg
My apologies Pembo on 2 accounts. Firstly you are absolutely right about flight times from northern UK airfields and secondly I was incorporating a bit of ‘road rage’ I was feeling from other threads which wasn’t fair.
To give you a proper answer (which I should have done in the first place), I think it will become standard in time but not for a few years until we are in an economic boom as there just isn’t the fat in the system to pay for it.

Heh, no worries.:)

I wonder what the cost implications are for airlines to install PTV’s as opposed to other forms of IFE?

My apologies Pembo on 2 accounts. Firstly you are absolutely right about flight times from northern UK airfields and secondly I was incorporating a bit of ‘road rage’ I was feeling from other threads which wasn’t fair.
To give you a proper answer (which I should have done in the first place), I think it will become standard in time but not for a few years until we are in an economic boom as there just isn’t the fat in the system to pay for it.

Regards and apologies
wys

PS I do still very much stand by my comment about people views of the charters compared to the low costs though!