Long haul flights can get pretty dull. Once you’ve gotten over the excitement of being in a metal tube which is somehow soaring tens of thousnads of feet in the air, you’re left with a slightly uncomfortable seat and hours to kill. In-flight entertainment is pretty much a necessity, and one airline is considering evolving the way we keep ourselves busy in their planes.
British Airways (BA) is set to trial a new system which would allow passengers to stream all of the content you can usually get on the backseat screens to your own phone, tablet, or laptop. They’re calling it Bring Your Own Device, aka BYOD, and some travellers will be very glad to hear that the screens, which are notoriously temperamental, could be on their way out.
Although BA has been clear that this service will be offered in addition to backseat screens, rather than as a replacement for them, some air travel providers have already started to phase out the tech on short-haul flights. Etihad, Qantas, and American Airlines are among the industry leaders scrapping screens on smaller aircrafts, and some are concerned that this could be BA taking a step toward determining them obsolete.
Some will undoubtedly celebrate this as a recognition of our changing travel habits, and a step forward, but others have expressed that they aren’t quite ready to lose inbuilt entertainment yet.
Whilst it is true that most of us load up our phones or iPads with TV shows, films, and podcasts before we travel, there are still some reasons that backseat screens can be helpful. For one, phones are pretty small, so after a while staring at them can give you a headache. For another, they run out of battery, and if you’ve accidentally shoved your charger in the hold, you’re left back at square one. Plus, wifi in the sky isn’t exactly foolproof, and as travel expert Clive Wratten pointed out to the Telegraph: ‘If airlines want us to stream, every seat must have reliable power and wifi.’
All you’ll have to do to access the streaming service, which will be free for all passengers on the selected trial flights, is connect to the on-flight wifi. Trials are scheduled to begin later this month. BA has not announced any plans to expand the system to short-haul journeys if it is successful, so you’ll have to stick to pre-boarding downloads for those.
For now, backseat screens are safe, but only time will tell if they survive the ongoing wireless revolution in the long run.
Eyes on the skies
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