Ascent

Virgin land Foxtel clinch in-flight show deal
November 4, 2004 - 3:42PM

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In-flight entertainment will reach new heights when Virgin Blue introduces live satellite television to all domestic flights.

Subscription television providers Austar and Foxtel have jumped on board with Virgin Blue to provide passengers with breaking television news, sporting events, comedy and lifestyle channels.

"Imagine flying yesterday from Perth watching the American election in flight on Sky News, CNN or Fox News," said Foxtel chief executive Kim Williams.

The service would be broadcast via satellite to the aircraft and displayed on some 8,0000 individual screens located at the back of seats.

The proposal, which has been four years in the making, was described by Virgin Blue chief executive Brett Godfrey as an "exciting and generational leap forward".

He said Virgin Blue, in conjunction with the US technology provider LiveTV, would become the first airline outside North America to harness the innovation, to be delivered under an exclusive licence with the carrier.

"This is a terribly exciting time for us," Mr Godfrey said.

"We decided that we wanted to be a carrier that gave money and choice back, along with great service in an industry that had lost its romanticism."

Called Live2Air, the service would offer the choice of 24 Foxtel and Austar channels, including Sky News Australia, CNN, The Comedy Channel, Fox Sports and Nickelodeon.

"We are dedicated innovators ... Foxtel's partnership with Virgin Blue and Austar in launching Live2Air was a natural fit," Mr Williams said.

However there is a catch, passengers will have to fork our for the new service which is activated with a credit card and costs $5 for unlimited use.

But Mr Godfrey said the carrier did not expect to gain a direct financial benefit.

"I just want it to be an incremental return in terms of us being a more desirable product," Mr Godfrey said.

He said the new technology would be phased in by mid next year subject to regulatory approval from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

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Not bad but if B6 can do it for free so should DJ.

cheap pacific fares

All very nice, but I'd rather hear some follow-up news to Virgin's announcement a few months ago that they would commence Pacific flights to the USA. I am still waiting, Mr Godfrey. What's happening?

d00t

qantas is already preparing for this by offferring cheap deals to usa.

virgin has definately struck a winner with the tv deal.. be good to see how qantas overcomes this

clifford

Hi d00t,

I'm not sure it will be such a winner for DJ. Let's see...

d00t

ever been on jetblue?

thadocta

Agreed. Comparing it to QF's offering, I am not too sure I would be willing to pay $5 to get info on-board on DJ which I could have obtained from the QP both before and after departure at the same fare on QF, even allowing for the free drinks before, during and after the flight.

Dave

GibSpmuh

I could imagine there could be a fair bit of demand for the Fox Sports channel depending on what events are on at the time, no more needing to hope the pilot will give out the score. Certainly if you were on a transcon to or from Perth then $5 would be a small price to pay to try to take your mind off being wedged in one of those seats anyway!

thadocta

Agreed, but for Australian sporting events, they are usually either late evening Friday, afteroon or even Saturday or afternoon Sunday. I normally schedule my flights accordingly (I have watched the last five AFL GF's on the big screen in the MEL QP).

I normally structure my flights around my lifestyle, I do not expect my inflight IFE to enhance my lifestyle - if this makes sense.

Dave

NM

For a 4 or 5 hour flight I would consider forking out $5. But not on a 1 hour BNE-SYD flight.

Now, by the time you add the extra charge for Blue Zone, Blue Room access and drinks, on-board meal and drinks, and now IFE, and the taxes and surcharges, the base fare pales into insignificance.

I wonder if they will charge an additional $5 for the headphones?

thadocta

Next thing will be $5 for your luggage to be on the right flight - they charge for EVERYTHING remember.

Dave

NM

If BA offered that, I would pay it every time .

tt7

Not quite everything - when they charge $5 to use the lavatory, then it'll be everything....

Craigo

I love how the CEO of Poxtel describes his company as "innovators". Yeah, innovators at finding ways to gouge more money out of their customers while providing mediocre service . The benefits of having an effective monopoly - Telstra consider my suburb to be NSW country for the purposes of broadband (so they can whack on an extra charge) but I can't get Austar as I'm too close to Canberra.

Leumas

You can always load your own luggage and load yourself... Don't Ryanair already make you load your own luggage?

Ascent

Will be interesting to see if this works, after doing a bit of reading i see that the original plan at jetBlue was to charge 5$ to activate the set, dunno if it was dropped before or after they started flying.

Hopefully QF will take Alaska Airline route with DigEplayers
http://www.alaskaair.com/as/www2/Flights/digEplayer.asp
although id love to know how many of these have gone missing.

Wouldnt it be a laugh is QF got these into the air before DJ with their DirectTV.