In-flight Entertainment - History

History

The first in-flight movie was in 1921 on Aeromarine Airways showing a film called Howdy Chicago to its passengers as the amphibious airplane flew around Chicago. The film The Lost World was shown to passengers of an Imperial Airways flight on April 1925 between London (Croydon airport) and Paris.

Eleven years later in 1932, the first in-flight television called 'media event' was shown on a Western Air Express Fokker F.10 aircraft.

The post-WWII British Bristol Brabazon airliner was initially specified with a 37-seat cinema within its huge fuselage; this was later reduced to a 23 seat cinema sharing the rear of the aircraft with a lounge and cocktail bar. The aircraft never entered service.

However, it was not until the 1960s that in-flight entertainment (other than reading, sitting in a lounge and talking, or looking out the window) was becoming mainstream and popular. In 1961, David Flexer of Inflight Motion Pictures developed the 16mm film system for a wide variety of commercial aircraft. This replaced the previous 30-inch-diameter film reels. It was also in the same year when the first ever feature film titled By Love Possessed was shown on a regular commercial airline flight.

In 1963, AVID Airline Products developed and manufactured the first pneumatic headset used on board the airlines and provided these early headsets to Trans World Airlines. These early systems consisted of in-seat audio that could be heard with hollow tube headphones. In 1979 pneumatic headsets were replaced by electronic headsets. The electronic headsets were initially available only on selected flights and premium cabins whereas economy class still had to make do with the old pneumatic headsets.

Throughout the early to mid 1960s, some in-flight movies were played back from videotape, using early compact transistorized videotape recorders made by Sony (such as the SV-201 and PV-201) and Ampex (such as the VR-660 and VR-1500), and played back on CRT monitors mounted on the upper sides in the cabin above the passenger seats with several monitors placed a few seats apart from each other. The audio was played back through the headsets.

In 1971, TRANS COM developed the 8mm film cassette. Flight attendants could now change movies in-flight and add short subject programming.

In 1975, Braniff International Airways introduced Atari video games to be played on-board flights.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, CRT-based projectors began to appear on newer widebody aircraft, such as the Boeing 767. These used LaserDiscs or video cassettes for playback. Some airlines upgraded the old film IFE systems to the CRT-based systems in the late 1980s and early 1990s on some of their older widebodies. In 1985, Avicom introduced the first audio player system, based on the Philips Tape Cassette technology. In 1988, the Airvision company introduced the first in-seat audio/video on-demand systems using 2.7 inch LCD technology for Northwest Airlines. The trials which were run by Northwest Airlines on its Boeing 747 fleet received overwhelmingly positive passenger reaction. As a result, this completely replaced the CRT technology.

Today, in-flight entertainment is offered as an option on almost all wide body aircraft, while some narrow body aircraft are not equipped with any form of In-flight entertainment at all. This is mainly due to the aircraft storage and weight limits. The Boeing 757 was the first narrow body aircraft to widely feature both audio and video In-flight entertainment and today it is rare to find a Boeing 757 without an In-flight entertainment system. Most Boeing 757s feature ceiling-mounted CRT screens, although some newer 757s may feature drop-down LCDs or audio-video on demand systems in the back of each seat. Many Airbus A320 series and Boeing 737 Next Generation aircraft are also equipped with drop-down LCD screens. Some airlines, such as WestJet, Continental Airlines and Delta Air Lines, have equipped some narrow body aircraft with personal video screens at every seat. Others, such as Air Canada and JetBlue, have even equipped some regional jets with AVOD.

For the introduction of personal TVs onboard jetBlue, company management tracked that lavatory queuing went far down. They originally had two planes, one with functioning IFE and one with none, the functioning one later was called "the happy plane".

In 2011, for the seventh year in a row, Emirates Airlines received the World’s Best Airline Inflight Entertainment’ award at the 2011 Skytrax World Airline Awards. The awards are based on voting by over 18.8 million airline passengers from 100 nationalities.