Axinom’s flexible, API-driven platform allows us to integrate seamlessly with our passenger experience portal while ensuring full compliance with Hollywood studio requirements. The collaboration is efficient, hands-on, and highly aligned with our vision.
– Takuya Matsuo, CMO and Executive Officer at ZIPAIR
The deployment includes media management, processing, and encoding, all run to studio specifications. Content is synchronized over-the-air, including distribution to caching services maintained in a containerized onboard software stack.
Zero IFE screens on ZIPAIR planes means passengers must bring their own entertainment. With Starlink rolling out, however, the carrier is investing more in content to keep passengers engaged.
A fleet management portal allows ground-based control of content assignments, content targeting based on destination, and content distribution across the airline’s fleet.
ZIPAIR manages the passenger portal in-house. Speaking at the World Aviation Festival in Lisbon last October Liyan Huang, ZIPAIR’s Director – Inflight Systems, shared optimism that internal control of the system would enable a faster and more nimble development process.
ZIPAIR engineers were responsible for integrating Axinom’s Player SDK and APIs into its digital ecosystem, maintaining full creative control at the airline level, while deploying the reliability of a studio-approved streaming backbone. In announcing the partnership Axinom called attention to that approach, noting it allows ZIPAIR to “at its own pace while maintaining operational simplicity.”
Increasing the investment in content may seem a curious decision given the shift to a more robust inflight internet service, but ZIPAIR believes it can still deliver returns. Huang believes the advertising revenue from the portal is valuable, helping to “offset a bit” of costs. Adding more and better content selections to the on-board experience helps the carrier avoid shedding those customer eyeballs, keeping them in the ZIPAIR experience as much as possible.
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Seth Miller has over a decade of experience covering the airline industry. With a strong focus on passenger experience, Seth also has deep knowledge of inflight connectivity and loyalty programs. He is widely respected as an unbiased commentator on the aviation industry.
He is frequently consulted on innovations in passenger experience by airlines and technology providers.
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