Entertainment options on the ground have shifted rapidly in recent years. Inflight entertainment was caught flat-footed, with legacy solutions simply not designed for the pace of change and barely able to keep up with the new content structure and needs. At least one industry executive is now taking some responsibility for that situation. Ken Sain, CEO of Panasonic Avionics offered an impressively self-aware observation during a conversation at the World Aviation Festival in Lisbon:
The IFE OEMs are to blame.
Sain later continued along those same lines, noting that it was the job of IFE manufacturers to “make it easy for airlines to deploy” the solutions, both hardware and software. Until recently, however, the hardware was more of a one-and-done configuration and software changes could take years to percolate through the development, testing, and deployment process.
Dominic Green, Director of IFE at United Airlines, in a later conversation, confirmed this challenge and also the progress that has been made in addressing it.
We now have the ability to do stuff quickly, which historically was not a great feature of inflight entertainment systems. Two or three years ago we were doing software updates every couple of years, and it would take two years to roll that out across the whole fleet. So if you were rolling out a new feature, you tested the heck out of it to make sure you get perfect now.
Now, with the support of Panasonic, we’re rolling out updates every quarter or so, which may not be as fast as people in the web and app space are, but we are in a state now where we can roll out new features really quickly.
The change in pace allows the airlines to be more responsive to shifts in consumer trends. It also allows airlines to experiment more. Knowing that an update can be further tweaked (or rolled back) on this schedule allows the carrier to be more aggressive in its decisions.
Green further noted that the company pulls significantly more data off the aircraft now, and far more quickly than in the prior generations of the IFE platforms. That enables United to quickly learn how passengers are interacting with the systems and tweak the experience.
Sain also shared a vision where each IFE screen on board ties in to the on-board connectivity solution – likely LEO satellites – to deliver a personalized passenger experience. That could be as simple as a passenger saving their preferred configuration of the icons on the screen, and that following them from flight to flight. One of the best parts, Sain observed, is that these improvements are all software based. It doesn’t add weight [and associated costs] to the aircraft, and it can be reset and reconfigured for a new set of travelers on each subsequent flight.
It will also lead to different content being served to different passengers. One implementation of that is saving the favorites list of movies. Panasonic implemented something along these lines with its companion app a decade ago. That was a limited solution based on limited technology available at the time. It has evolved since then – and includes other airlines and suppliers – to passengers being able to set certain preferences and have them follow from flight to flight. JetBlue’s Blueprint solution, built in partnership with Thales, is another example.
Airlines (and their suppliers) must also address the competing demand of delivering solutions that improve their own value, not just that of the passenger. IFC “may create value for the passenger, which indirectly creates value for the airline,” Sain shared. “But that is very different from having an ecosystem that airlines can create loyalty from. And some will want to monetize it. That’s the fundamental reason why IFC is not a substitute for IFE.”
One version of that added value on the airline side comes in the form of targeted advertising. “Our previous model for customers was showing the same three or four pre-roll ads before every movie, every TV show,” Green observed. “It was not great for anyone. The only advertisers we got were major brand partnerships that were okay with just saturating the campaigns, but customers didn’t like it.”
With the updated platform, however, flight manifest data is uploaded to the aircraft as the gate agent closes out the flight, “so we know a lot of information about every customer at every seat. We’re able to start targeting. And it is not just ads, but promotions and messaging as well. We can tell a customer there’s an upgrade opportunity on your connecting flight and offer it to them in miles or dollars, giving them something valuable there and then.”
United, like the other US airlines, has a deep partnership with its co-brand credit card partner. In a recent update the carrier added a verification step – passengers confirm on the IFE screen who they are – which allows for a deeper level of targeting. The data includes whether the passenger is a MileagePlus member and which Chase credit card they might hold. Green shares that United uses that, plus the verification, to vary the offering. An existing cardholder will see a pitch to upgrade, for example, rather than one for an entry level new card.
This is arguably one of the easiest levels of customization, and also one with the most potential profit. But it has proven elusive to the industry until very, very recently (and even now not always perfect).
Impressively, United also shares that its shift towards this targeted ad platform is showing positive results. It can include more advertisers thanks to smaller, targeted campaigns. Engagement (i.e. click-throughs) is increasing because passengers are seeing more relevant content. Green also shared that “passenger satisfaction scores go up at the same time as we’re serving even more ads and messages and combining the high-margin revenue for that as well. It works together.”
And it all depends on the convergence of inflight entertainment and connectivity systems. Those relationships are now maturing at a much faster pace, enabling these sorts of solutions. And the IFE providers are no longer making it as difficult for the airlines to realize those goals.
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