biggles898

Hey gang,

Does anybody know which American Airlines Flights have Live TV on them?

I'm specifically interested in the Sports 24/7 Package.

I have to fly from LAX to Miami on Sunday June 18th for work and want to watch the US Open on the flight. Flight 1024.

Wondering if anybody knows whether or not they have live TV on that flight route or not.

Neither the website nor American Airlines customer service can give me a definitive answer.

Thanks!

ORD-DCA Flyer

Live TV is only on aircraft with satellite based connectivity, so at this point that’s the 77W, 788 and 789.

Your flight will be on an A321 or other GoGo equipped narrowbody, so no Live TV will be on board.

This is likely to change when narrowbodies get ViaSat, but that won’t be for quite a while.

JDiver

Welcome to FlyerTalk.

It would help to know which aircraft (or at least which flight so someone could check if they wish). But live telly isn't usual on AA. Here's a thread that has links to the different aircraft types and usually what kind of IFE they offer: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...s-ife-etc.html. (We will ultimately merge this into that thread.)

In the future, AA is moving to a model where the IFE from a local server and is streamed within the aircraft on WiFi to our own device - that's currently used on aircraft like the MD-80s and will be thevstandard on narrowbodied aircraft (those with seatback IFE will retrain that, but the 737 MAX will have streaming).

ORD-DCA Flyer

I'd also note that if you took flight 1088 instead of flight 1024, you'd find yourself on a 77W with live TV.

Stizzack

LAX-OGG tomorrow at a horrible time with respect to seeing the final round of The Open. Getting no smarter about my chances by looking at AAs own website. Just references to live streaming, but I can throw away all the live streams except for the miracle of getting a feed for The Open. Anybody know?

Wife just walked away at my suggestion we rebook to Monday

danielonn

How about SlingBox?

DenverBrian

I had live streaming TV on a 752 LAS-MIA on 12/26.

The service had four available channels. That's right. Four. CNN, CNBC, BBC, and the 24/7 Sports thing.

It's like it's 1955 and AA's "live TV" is what they can pick up with rabbit ears.

longtimereader firstimeposter

DenverBrian

Yep, there's domestic live TV with 12 channels (woohoo) via DISH, on some planes that you really can't tell until you're in the air; and there is "international" live TV with the whopping four channels on some planes that you really can't tell until you're in the air.

Except on Taco Tuesday. And only if your last name has the same number of letters as the available channels.

Seriously, the whole wifi/TV thing on AA is a CF, especially compared to other airlines.

enviroian

I watched live TV (CNN) on AA 78 Thursday. It was a 777-300 and I believe if memory serves there were 4-5 channel options (BBC, CNBC, maybe ESPN but don't recall).

beachfan

seigex

I had live tv on a 772 (N780AN DFW-NRT), but it was only CNN, BBC News, another news channel I can't remember, and a Sports channel. We had Panasonic internet on the plane. It was disappointing.

remedy

HLCinCOU

Not sure why we resurrected this 6-month-dead thread when the Open is long done, but what the hey...

It's hard to say for sure, but it sounds like you may be misinterpreting their description of streaming to pax-owned-devices; that streaming comes from media servers within the aircraft. The live TV broadcasts aren't streamed* to the aircraft, but rather are normal satellite broadcasts; I'm not sure whether the onboard media servers then package that up and ship it to wifi for PED consumption. But that would still depend on the aircraft in question having the satellite live TV system, and on the Open (or whatever) being on one of the channels offered.

This suggestion should make anybody who has used GoGo wifi chuckle. I can't even keep a VPN running. You might have luck on the new satellite wifi systems, but it's hard to say. Same story with any third-party IP streaming service...it's just a bandwidth-intensive operation and GoGo isn't really up to the task.


*to add a bit of precision, a "stream" in this context would be a data connection setup individually for the airplane (or individual passenger), as opposed to a "broadcast" signal where the airplane is listening to the same radio signal all the DISH clients on the ground are hearing.

3Cforme

You may not be familiar with the different Gogo systems that are installed on commercial aircraft.

Gogo ATG, as in Air To Ground - god-awful slow

ATG-4 - just slow

Satellite Ku, as been installed in a lot of AA and DL long-haul aircraft - tough to call it broadband, and both carriers prohibit video streaming, IIRC

Satellite 2Ku - not too bad, actually, if you can live with the latency. I've seen about 12 Mbps down. DL has more than 400 narrowbodies with 2Ku; I've stopped counting.

Some TV on Gogo 2Ku systems actually is IPTV, not a satellite TV capture. The number of channels (and resolution) is very bandwidth-dependent. https://www.gogoair.com/learning-cen...ve-tv-service/