Free In-Flight Entertainment American Airlines
No one can argue that Delta has truly been a leader among the big three in pretty much every aspect of the game these last few years. Yesterday’s huge issues aside, Delta has been the leader when it comes to product, on board service and even the conversion to revenue based loyalty. Back in June they led on something else.
In June Delta announced that they would be making in flight entertainment complimentary for customers in all cabins on domestic flights. That initiative went into effect on July 1 and Delta says they have complimentary IFE on 90% of their planes. United does offer a decent amount of complimentary entertainment as well, so I guess it was a matter of time before American copied.
Today American Airlines announced free in flight entertainment in all cabins on domestic flights. This is how they put it in their press release:
American Airlines (Nasdaq:AAL) is continuing to elevate the customer experience by adding complimentary premium movies, TV shows, music and games in the Main Cabin on all domestic flights offering seatback entertainment systems or Wi-Fi. Beginning this month, customers will have unrestricted access to the best and largest content library among the U.S. carriers from their own device or seatback entertainment systems.
Thoughts
Considering more and more of American’s planes are coming with seatback entertainment, I think this is a great move. Previously a very limited amount of content was free in coach, basically a string of NBC shows. I think this will make a huge difference on longer flights, especially those to Hawaii from the West Coast, where the planes all have seat back screens.
Of course their WiFi based streaming works well too and customers will have much more choice even if they are on an older plane. With that said, many of American’s planes still don’t have WiFi streaming or seat back entertainment, so this isn’t available fleet wide. In the end I do think this is a great move and one that I am sure will make American customers happy. Of course, that is if they can get over the constant delays and other issues one runs into when flying the airline!
What do you think? Are you excited about free IFE on American?
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[…] on these sales, see the View from the Wing post linked to above. Good stuff from United and American on the same day? Wow. […]
Running an airline for dummies…
Highlight Delta, ctrl+c, ctrl+v
At least they copied something good this time.
It would be nice to see American do something innovative, versus following the competition. Although in this instance, it is a win for the consumers.