Delta Air Lines announced a series of updates to its IFE experience as part of the CES keynote presentation on Tuesday evening. Speaking to the gathered crowd in Las Vegas, as well as to the world via livestream CEO Ed Bastian shared what Delta sees as the future, powered by AI and delivering personalization beyond what is available today.
Bastian delivered plenty of sound bites during the presentation (Technology is changing the way we travel, with AI at the forefront…. Using technology to create premium experiences with humanity at the core… You expect travel that feels tailored to you) but many of the bits promised came without timeframes, other than “in a few years.”
And at least one of them raises very serious questions about how the airline decides what is appropriate to integrate into its platform.
Among the announcements from the event:
Delta Concierge
A GenAI-powered system that will “know” passengers and their travel needs, predicting where it can help and offering assistance along the way. Bastian described it as “A thread across your experience, a GenAI-powered assistant that anticipates your needs and provides recommendations.”
This was woven throughout the keynote. We followed Eve, a passenger of the future, throughout her travel day.
The GenAI was “smart enough” to recognize that there was too much traffic, making a drive to the airport 90 minutes and offer her an eVTOL ride with Delta’s partner Joby instead. Putting aside the low likelihood that she would get to a vertiport, have an aircraft waiting, and then get to the airport in the 10 minutes the demo promised, we’re still years away from this being a reality for most of what Delta wants it to be. Bastian also referenced that it would be great to have something like Joby in NYC, which is amusing because it is a key Delta market where helicopter transfers are available between JFK and Manhattan.
Once at the airport, Eve is guided via AR-glasses to the bag drop, where her permanent digital bag tag means she doesn’t have to stop and deal with printing paper tags. This is something Alaska Airlines rolled out a couple years ago, as have other airlines around the globe. Delta pitching it as a future development is a bit curious in that context. She then passes through a biometric screening checkpoint without needing to show papers, something Delta has been rolling out for the past couple years.
At the end of the trip the “AI” orders your Uber, something that has also been around for a while and no one was pretending that was artificial intelligence. It is notable, however, that Delta is dumping Lyft and shifting its ride-hailing partnership to Uber. SkyMiles members will be able to earn on UberX/Premium/Reserved rides and UberEats from eligible restaurants.
Read more: Thales FlytEDGE delivers a new paradigm for in-flight entertainment
The Delta Concierge app/experience/whatever will also be available to reservations agents, aiming to help them provide better service to passengers who call in. It is unclear what of the experience that will touch.
And not explicitly mentioned as part of the GenAI experience, but seems like it could/should’ve been, a flight attendant and the head of Qualtrics talked about using data to deliver more human touch experiences as key passenger moments, by knowing more about travelers from beginning to end of the trip.
New IFE Content Partners
Delta announced three major IFE content partnerships as part of the event.
YouTube will make “highly curated” content available – ad free – on both personal devices and seatbacks. This will include music, podcasts, and regular videos. It is pitched as an exclusive and will also include a free trial for YouTube Premium and Music that passengers can use after they leave the plane. That sort of trial offer conversion has been a mainstay of content deals in recent years, typically tied to streaming partners.
Read more: Delta boosts moving map accessibility with FlightPath3D update
Delta’s partnership with Tom Brady will also finally take flight, with the retired quarterback hosting a video series called “Well Traveled” to be featured on board. Based on his top three travel tips shared on stage (stay hydrated, be active on the ground, use flight time to focus and work) I am skeptical of the value of this offering.
Finally, the carrier announced a partnership with DraftKings. I’m hoping that I misheard the part where Bastian described it as part of the “gaming” offerings on the in-seat IFE. I am not a fan of this at all. If people want to gamble on their personal devices that’s one thing. But pushing it into the IFE platform is a morally questionable choice to me.
New IFE Platform
Not explicitly mentioned at the event, but shared in a follow-up press release, is that Thales Inflyt will power some of Delta’s new IFE offering on board with its new FlytEDGE system. Backed by 96TB of storage and connected real-time to data sources on the ground, FlytEDGE converts the IFE screens from a proprietary architecture to an embedded web browser, with the bulk of content hosted in the onboard datacenter and other bits served up from the ground. Things like A/B testing, user-targeting for ads, and content updates promise to be significantly easier to implement.
Read more: Delta’s AI Play: Higher Fares on the Horizon
In the CES demo Delta highlighted real-time language translation for passengers and a restaurant booking service embedded in the IFE platform. Both of those are powered by FlytEDGE, according to the release.
The translation service appears to be somewhat limited, however. In the press release the carrier says “Flight attendants will have the ability to send specific messages to seatback screens and translate them into customers’ preferred language,” suggesting that the translatable/translated content is a limited pre-selected set of announcements, not a real-time translation of messages from the crew.
Passengers will also have access to video content personalized to their viewing habits via “an intelligent recommendation engine that tailors content to passenger preferences so they spend less time scrolling and more time enjoying.” An “Arrival Mode” transitions the IFE system into an information hub, either for connecting flight details or that Uber booking mentioned above.
This deal is the first between Delta and Thales, with the latter joining Panasonic Avionics as a solutions provider to the airline. The first fitted aircraft are expected to be flying in 2026.
Qatar Airways was announced as the first FlytEDGE customer last October for its A321neo fleet.
In an unfortunate and ironic twist, Delta appears to have suffered a brief outage of some technical systems while Bastian was presenting, preventing aircraft from departing. It was resolved in under an hour, but that’s still a tough go when the carrier is still in the midst of a lawsuit over its IT failures after the CrowdStrike patch SNAFU.
Hard to decide if that’s better or worse than Bastian essentially parroting United Airlines‘ “Uniting the World” tag line on stage at one point.
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