BA To Upgrade In Flight Entertainment On Long Haul Flights.

This was in the Times travel business news.

British Airways is upgrading its antiquated IFE system to a new Thales product. BA has about 130 long-haul aircraft, suggesting a possible installation price of more than $500 million for the fleet and a further $500 million to maintain it.

Alan Pellegrini, vice-president of inflight systems at Thales, said: “The IFE is a very high profile thing to an airline. It directly touches the airline%26#39;s passengers so if there is a problem the passengers tend to get very vocal about it and then the airline%26#39;s chief executive gets vocal with us.”

According to Thales, which controls about 40 per cent of the IFE market worldwide, there are usually only ever a couple of seats that have malfunctioning systems per flight. Some airlines believe that the traditional system will become redundant as passengers bring onboard their own devices.

However, Thales believes that a mixed system will be needed. Mr Pellegrini said: “We want to allow passengers to plug devices into their seat using a USB port and watch their own movies on our larger screens.”

In the fight for passenger loyalty, airlines will be forced to invest in ever more sophisticated systems. Large, flat-screen televisions with internet connectivity and a movie selection comparable to a BlockBuster store are the future. Sadly, the size of the seat is likely to stay the same.

BA To Upgrade In Flight Entertainment On Long Haul Flights.

The airlines are wrong and Thales is right- we want good IFE and don%26#39;t want to bring all our crap with us.

And w/o a charging point at every seat (not just FC/Bus), they only last 2 hours anyway. What are we going to do for the other 7 hours of a nine hour flight?

BA To Upgrade In Flight Entertainment On Long Haul Flights.

I hope they dont do a Virgin ,advertise on TV and in Mags then stop when only half there planes have been upgraded.

I will be very surprised if this will be done in this climate ,but fingers crossed as it would be nice .

I doubt I will be lucky enough to have this up grade complete for our trip in August

:(

Mick