Picking the Hits: How Air Canada Uses Data Analytics to Optimize Its IFE Content
At APEX TECH 2020, delegates learned how Air Canada is tweaking its content strategy using insights about its in-flight entertainment selection, provided by Spafax IQ.
Gogo and SmartSky Networks Share 5G Plans
At APEX TECH 2020, in-flight connectivity providers Gogo and SmartSky Networks shared their excitement about the benefits of 5G technology.
Cool Running
Carlisle IT has a overheating solution for electronically steered antennas
Deal Me In
Before movies, Wi-Fi or live bands, playing cards were offered as in-flight entertainment.
Sound Tube: The Surprising History of Airline Headsets
In the days before cheap, electronic headsets, AVID Products designers took inspiration from a medical stethoscope and created the pneumatic headset.
Journey to the Cloud
Can the IFE content delivery supply chain be made more efficient by breaking it free of its assembly-line routine and moving it entirely to a cloud computing platform?
Reel Time
It’s been almost a century since the first, primitive experiments with in-flight film projection took place in an Aeromarine Airways Curtis F5L aircraft. It was 1921, and the 11 passengers on a sightseeing flight over Chicago were shown a silent movie promoting the city. But it wasn’t until 1961 that David Flexer’s Inflight Motion Pictures brought regular in-flight entertainment to passengers on Trans World Airlines’ early jets.
Remote Access
Up in the air, there have been remote controls for as long as in-flight entertainment (IFE) has been in the cabin. Long before touch screens, control buttons for an IFE system were either installed in a seat’s armrest or on a tethered remote unit that retracted into a recess.
A Burning Question
Lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous portable powerhouses in the world of rechargeable energy storage, with billions of cells produced annually. Found in everything from wireless earbuds to in-flight entertainment tablets, their pervasiveness extends to the aircraft cabin – but maybe not for long.
Guess Where I’m Calling From?
There was a time when smartphones weren’t smart, and you still dialed a call. Connectivity meant that you knew how to hook up a turntable and a cassette deck to the stereo, and bandwidth was the size of the elastic in your sweat pants. Then, in the 1980s, personal computers and mobile cellular phones disrupted the tech landscape, and airline passengers started seeing Airfone handsets in the cabin.