A quick AirFly Pro review
 

Had just tried this first time in J from LAX-SYD-AKL. ANZ is still behind the times and the old Business Premiere product is not Bluetooth enabled.

Very cool little piece of kit that connects via., 3.5mm cable and is charged via., USB (non-C). It’s an excellent proposition for a frequent traveller. Because I travel with a fair bit of kit, it’s nice being completely wire free.

I paid 75$ NZD and would highly recommend. The battery lasted the entire trip, I did do a quick recharge in LA, but it worked very well with my Sony WH-1000MX5


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...944214421d.jpg

What airlines currently have Bluetooth-enabled IFE? I think one of the ME airlines do, and UA is in the very early stages with their narrowbody fleet.

awesome question and I’m unsure. ANZ experimented with the idea a year or so ago but found a maximum of 20-30 devices could be connected at one time. I understand there’s a French company that can ringfence an area so only devices within a seat space can be connect. N.B., I only fly SQ or NZ metal :)

What is the lag like? Every time I've tried to do Bluetooth from a video source I've encountered major audio sync issues.

Good question, apologies it wasn’t included in the original post. No issues with A/V sync at all - very nice product to use and works brilliantly ,

cheers
AK

Generally this is either an old(er) Bluetooth issue or a codec issue.

Il second this. I bought one after seeing it discussed here in an older thread. It works brilliantly. And not only can I connect my AirPods to it, I was able to connect a Bluetooth receiver to it as well and use it with my Bose QC-20i set as well on long haul trips. It works very well and uses modern codecs so the audio quality is great and no lag issues.

it was very much worth the money.

Condor (their new A330-900s). Our aircraft from FRA to YYZ was one week old.

It's the reason that the AirFly seems to be so popular - it's has lower latency than most of the other cheap bluetooth transmitters. It also supports lower latency codecs like AptX-LL (although in fairness, a lot of headphones don't support those either so it often won't help!)

Looks like they've updated the charging port to USB-C. Not sure when that happened, but it's nice.

Does it come with an adapter to use with the airline two-pin (dual-pronged) audio connection?

For others wondering about this, here is what the manufacturer says. I am packing to return mine as the volume is VERY low, even when source is at max.

Will I need an adapter if the airplane has two-prong (or three-prong) audio jacks

May 30, 2023 13:45

If the airplane you're on has two-prong audio jacks, we recommend an "airline flight adapter" for use with your AirFly (removed link). This adapter has two prongs that plug into the airplane’s in-flight entertainment system and a jack for headphones into which you can plug the AirFly.

On an airplane with a three-port jack, you can use a 2-pin adapter and ignore the third (smaller) prong. The extra prong is used for special features such as noise cancellation on airline-supplied headphones but is not needed when using the AirFly with your Bluetooth headphones.

NOTE that the AirFly will work without an adapter in two-prong or three-prong audio jacks, but you will likely only get audio in one ear. For stereo, you'll need that second prong.

That's actually part of the design. The second plug offers a bit of a power boost to the volume. You could probably plug in the two prong and then the airfly after that, that should fix the problem in theory.

I still remember the days (I think it was CX or AC, don't remember which).... every time an announcement was made, the earphones would literally fly out of my ears because the gain was too high. I'd be deaf for the next hour or so.

Ah. I tested it at home using my phone and a 2-channel amp. Never thought that it would need the second pin because I assumed airplane usage was only one of the use case scenarios (based on their literature). I guess will hang on until the next flight.

It could still be an issue. But they aren't incorrect. The third pin is useless in most cases. But When I plug in the two pin adapter and then any headset after, I don't have any issues with volume. Not sure how BT affects it the equation, but I often don't play anything really loud when I'm on the plane and connected to their system. The main reason being that I've had way too many times where my ears are nearly blown out. And since I'm already using ANC headphones (usually my QC25), less than half volume is good enough for me. I guess I'll confirm that on my next flight when the powers that be say we're to go to the other offices to support them.