Hot Topic: American Airlines Legitimizes Portable Paradigm for Wide-Bodies

For some time the portable IFE player has been considered a fill-in product or one designated for single-aisle aircraft. Never-the-less it found a home on bigger jets in the form of a small DVD player and a slew of handed-out DVD's. The advent of units with internal hard drives brought about a revolution a few years back. Although passengers routinely carried on portable entertainment technology that shamed airline offerings, there were real issues associated with the development of robust and reliable handhelds that airlines felt would both entertain and make business sense. The dam broke with Alaska Airlines offering the digEplayer on their single-aisle aircraft, and a host of others followed—some like lemmings, but others with a legitimate vision of the future. No doubt, some portable IFE devices have found their way on to big jets, however, American Airlines recently announced a portable digital player from IMS for their B767-300 wide-body First and Business Class passengers. American's 10.6" PEDs (That's American-speak for Passenger Entertainment Device) are based on Fujitsu laptop technology featuring screens with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 1280x768 pixel resolution.

The PEDs are boarded on the aircraft in metal carts along with Bose QC3 noise canceling headsets and power cords. They are on all outgoing international flights from the United States and retrieved upon their return - 58 aircraft/30 seats per aircraft. Audio/Video content is updated monthly, however, they also receive Blast! news headlines from IMS Network Operations Center prior to each outgoing flight. Reuters news is pushed to IMS' Network Operations Center throughout the day where it is "containerized" and sent immediately over a VPN to the airport. "IMS will provide both the hardware platform and all related content services including content acquisition, licensing, integration, security and delivery," said Joseph Renton, IMS chairman & CEO.

It would be a missed opportunity not to mention that this is a big deal. We think American Airlines is on a very progressive path and it looks to us that they plan to put the latest information and entertainment in the hands of their passengers. Note we said "information and entertainment", not hardware or technology. American is obviously a travel solutions provider, however, by redefining their IFE, content and content delivery they are equally becoming an entertainment and information provider - this is indeed a big deal!

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