Jaunted

Literary Travel / Airline News / Qantas / Australia Travel / In-Flight Entertainment / → All Tags

Put Down the Kindle and Pick Up a Qantas-Published Novel

Put down your Kindle and stow your iPad, because Qantas wants you to actually turn the pages of a real book on your next flight. The Aussie airline's newest in-flight entertainment option will allow you to curl up at your seat with a series of published novels.

The initiative, called "Stories for Every Journey", offers frequent flyers the opportunity to settle into engrossing tales specially written for the airline and tailored around all flight durations. Not only are reads perfectly suited for a 2-hour flight or a 23-hour multi-leg journey, but they'll look good in any seatback pocket with original cover art designed by Paul Belford.

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Virgin America / In-Flight Entertainment / Sir Richard Branson / Travel News / → All Tags

It's Now Possible to Send That Hottie in Another Row a Drink on Virgin America

Yesterday, Virgin America not only launched its new three-times daily flight service from Los Angeles to Las Vegas but it also unveiled its new seat-to-seat ordering service on the Red in-flight entertainment system. Yes, it means what you think it means--you can buy drinks and snacks for your friends, your colleagues or perhaps your new crush and have the goodies sent right to their seat.*

David Cush, CEO of Virgin America, told us that the new service evolved from the seat-to-seat chat platform on Red but the real inspiration was that "people were doing it anyways." So now instead of flagging the flight attendants down, passengers can just take the onboard happy hour into their own hands.**

Here's how it works:

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Q Streaming / Qantas / Australia Travel / In-Flight Entertainment / iPads / Onboard Services / Technology / → All Tags

Qantas' New In-Flight iPads are Boss

Yesterday we talked about Qantas' comfy new black leather business-class seats, but the real champion of the overhauled airplane is the in-flight entertainment system. We have mentioned Q Streaming before and we're excited to get our hands on the technology.

Not for lack of trying, we have been on a few planes with the hopes of discovering an Apple iPad in the seat-back pocket all to be disappointed. As soon as we turned the corner to board the plane and saw the product logo right next to the door, admittedly, our heart skipped a beat. We can finally catch up on a few episodes of Modern Family directly streamed to the device over a WiFi network.

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Airline News / Scoot / Singapore Travel / In-Flight Entertainment / iPads / Gogo / WiFi / Travel Tech / Gogo Vision / → All Tags

Why You'll Want to Stream While Scooting at 35,000'

Our winner of the 2012 best travel newcomer award has just given us even more reason to love them. This week, newish Singapore-based budget airline Scoot introduced their in-flight streaming of entertainment to passenger gadgets.

If you can remember back when we flew them, we noted how great it was to be handed an iPad loaded up with TV shows, movies and games to keep us entertained on our medium-haul flight. Now, if you are one of those travelers who wouldn't even think about traveling without your iPad or Android tablet, you can get the hours of in-flight entertainment streamed directly to that device.

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Videos / A380 / Airbus / Lufthansa / In-Flight Entertainment / Airplanes / SFO / FRA / → All Tags

Your Moment of Zen: A Time-Lapse Trip on a Lufthansa A380

We have a theory when it comes to enjoying seatback in-flight entertainment. You're either an Airshow person or not. By Airshow, we mean that channel that constantly rotates between the moving map and stats of your flight, like outside air temperature, speed and time to destination. Those passengers who are Airshow people could easily leave the seemingly boring channel on through the entire flight and be sufficiently entertained, whereas a non-Airshow person flips from movie to 30 Rock rerun, to playing Bejeweled.

This post goes out to all you Airshow people. The Airbus A380 is totally the plane for you. You see, it goes above and beyond the Airshow channel to offer three additional channels, each with a livestream from a camera on the exterior of the plane. One looks down to the ground below, one looks out front—a pilot's view, and the third looks over the entire plane from the rear.

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Emirates / Airlines / Airline News / Windows 8 / Tech Travel / In-Flight Entertainment / → All Tags

Emirates' Crew Will Take Their Tablets Just as the Doctor Ordered

Initially it was just passengers getting access to in-flight entertainment in the form of all those tablet devices, but slowly we’ve seen the technology find its way into the hands of cabin crews as well. From pilots to flight attendants it seems like everyone is getting in on the touch-screen fun, and now it looks like another airline is doing the same.

Emirates has just plunked down a chunk of change for a whole bunch of HP ElitePad 900 tablets. These will be powered by Windows 8 and should be arriving up in the air at sometime in January—they’re kind of like on backorder. The airline says that the new tablets will be loaded up with what they call KIS—or Knowledge Driven In-Flight Services. This provides all kinds of tidbits of information based on the airline, on the flights, the passengers, and pretty much everything else.

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Gogo / In-Flight WiFi / WiFi / In-Flight Entertainment / Holiday Travel / → All Tags

Gogo's Got Three Holiday Deals for Your In-Flight Surfing Pleasure

Happy holidays from the folks over at Gogo, as it’s time once again to offer up some holiday savings on your in-flight connectivity needs. After all, you will need to check in on your way home for Thanksgiving this week, maybe to see if you need to stop at Costco for that oversized pumpkin pie—all at 35,000-feet of course.

The Gogo Holiday Jetpacks are available in three flavors, and each comes with a cute name and an equally adorable little logo. Up first is the Gogo Turkey 2-Pack. This is available between November 17 and November 25, and for $14.50 you’ll score access to two all-day passes redeemable on any Gogo equipped flights.

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Allegiant / Allegiant Air / Row 44 / In-Flight Entertainment / Travel Tech / Tech Travel / In-Flight Comfort / → All Tags

Allegiant Gets Ready to Beam Entertainment Right to Your Seat at 35,000 Feet

News about Allegiant Air usually is all about cheap fares to lesser known city pairs, unique fees and surcharges, and of course the recent ability to fly all the way over to Hawaii. Rarely—as in never—do we hear the carrier’s thoughts on in-flight entertainment or other tech tidbits to keep passengers entertainment while up in the air, so that’s why we almost choked on our breakfast burrito when we heard about their feelings on in-flight movies.

Allegiant is planning to team up with Row 44 in hopes of bringing a little bit of in-flight connectivity to their low-cost carrier model, as apparently they understand that even passengers on cheap fares can get pretty darn bored up in the air.

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Boeing / Tech Travel / Travel Tech / Airplanes / Airplane News / In-Flight Entertainment / → All Tags

Boeing Adds In-Flight WiFi and Other Tech Tidbits as Standard Options

When it comes to airplanes there’s all kinds of standard features. You’re pretty much guaranteed a seat, a tray table, and of course a seatbelt. However, as technology moves forward you might just be guaranteed a few other things that will keep you in touch with the folks on the ground. We’re already pretty familiar with in-flight WiFi, but it looks like Boeing wants some of these tech tidbits to become standard equipment across their lineup.

Things like in-flight cell phone use, WiFi options, and even television will now be available as options on some of the new planes. This year you can expect 747-8s and 777s to roll off the assembly line with the features and Boeing is even working to retrofit some of the new connectivity options onto and into the 787 as well.

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Delta / In-Flight WiFi / WiFi / In-Flight Entertainment / Airline News / Airlines / → All Tags

Delta's Fleet is Hungry for Increased In-Flight WiFi Bandwidth and Gogo Vision

If you’re getting bored with the current state of in-flight WiFi—don’t worry—as it looks like Delta is partnering up with Gogo to take your in-flight entertainment to the next level.

Gogo Vision, that’s their in-flight video streaming shenanigans, will be making an appearance across Delta’s WiFi-enabled fleet—which is practically all of their planes. Delta is going to get hard at work later this year, as it upgrades and updates things across the domestic fleet with a hope of logging on as soon as next year. After that they’ll turn their attention over to the international planes, but that’s going to take a little bit longer. Even with an expedited schedule, it sounds like you won’t be utilizing Gogo Vision across the Atlantic or the Pacific until like 2015.

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Airline News / Qantas / Australia Travel / In-flight Entertainment / Q-Streaming / In-Flight Comfort / Airplane Seats / Business Class Travel / 767 / → All Tags

Can Black Leather Seats and Wood Armrests Give Qantas Its Groove Back?

In what seems like a never ending tennis game between two airlines never refusing to give up on the competition, Qantas has announced plans to overhaul their cabins to create a refreshed and modern look for their fleet of Boeing 767s, just after Virgin Australia's big news.

This all comes just after plans to roll-out aircraft-wide in-flight iPads and Q-Streaming for every passenger regardless of cabin. The refreshed cabins are just one part of the Red Roo's plan to reinvent how domestic flyers view travel in Australia.

While both cabins will see a contemporary design in seats and fabrics, the business class cabins will be the only ones to get cushy, black leather seating. Each biz seat will also sport (what looks like) a wood-finish armrest to add a bit of that burlwood-on-your-dashboard luxury to the skies.

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Booze Travel / Airline News / Virgin Australia / Australia Travel / A330 / In-flight Cocktails / In-Flight Entertainment / Economy Class Travel / → All Tags

Fly Transcon on Virgin Australia and Get--Gasp--Free Food and Booze

Passengers flying from coast to coast Down Under can now enjoy a little more comfort when tackling the nearly 5-hour flight. With the addition of larger aircraft plus free meals and drinks, Virgin Australia is wooing passengers to fill planes from Perth to Melbourne.

Next month, the Australian airline will only fly Airbus A330s on between the two cities. These internationally configured aircraft will also be doing their thing more frequently between Perth and Sydney.

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