MY-OTHER-BROTHER-"TED"

^^^

Isn't UA getting $$$ for the ads even if no-one scans their card?

After a 6 plus hour flight I'm ready to scream after seeing the same thing over and over, and even if I turn mine off the other screens are constantly doing their redundancy! This is worse than being waterboarded!!!

Grog

Woohoo, it was a brilliant hardware decision...and it's now haunting current travelers. Bravo!

steveo

On that note I like the DirectTV, and purchase it many times. Great way to catch up on the news, or stupid gameshows, or sports. Of course I spend a lot of time in some remote oil fields where I might not hear from the outside world for a few weeks.

Kacee

This is where the noise cancelling headphones and eyeshades come in.

wetrat0

I hate PTV screens that come on during flight, repeatedly, after you've turned them off. I have experienced this on United as well. Eyeshades are an ok solution, but it should be a simple fix to make the default setting of the screen "off", i.e., make the passenger press a button or tap the screen to turn it on, rather than the other way around. Especially for night flights where 90% of pax are sleeping but somehow 80% of screens are on, flooding the cabin with artificial light.

Flyingfox

Sounds like something that would happen on a low cost carrier.

notquiteaff

I can't read with eyeshades on (unless there's now a Kindle app for my Google DayDream? I should check). I have no problems with people watching TV if they want, but if they don't, the screens should be turned off instead of flickering advertisement. Unfortunately UA (or CO...) has made it too darn hard to actually turn the screens off.

Kacee

Of course they should, but UA's not going to fix this. So the only real solution from the pax perspective is Bose + eyeshades. If I'm not trying to sleep, I don't really care that much if the screen flicks on.

emcampbe

I'm wondering about a reset, too. IME, I don't recall ever seeing the screens turn back on if I've turned them off.

Useful to some, perhaps, but I don't think its worth paying to see a subset of the drivel that I can get on cable at home on a flight for a few hours. IIRC, there are threads that CO asked FFs if they'd prefer to have wifi or live tv, the overwhelming answer was wifi, but they went with DirecTV anyway. I get it if you need to fly during a special sporting event that is important to watch, or a news junkie or something, but that's about it.

Yes, was a great plan to have basically zero install costs and take zero financial risk (aside from increased weight) no matter what the sales were - basically DirecTV took all the risk. Not so great for customers, as I understand it, the long term contract prohibits pretty much any other sort of IFE being offered until the contract ends (not sure when that is) or whenever UA decides to break it (probably a large fee for that). So while the rest of the entire UA fleet is going to have PDE as an option, in many cases, in addition to existing AVOD that is remaining on the plane, the 737s with DirecTV won't get that. Its unfortunate CO as the carrier that signed the deal (and now UA) will not be flexible enough to offer its PDE solution, which is by no means perfect, but certainly better (IMO) than live tv.

Don't know how much AA is doing these days, but Pre-merger US was the worst - not just announcements but FAs walking down the aisles with applications, and tray tables which had advertisements for this on them.

kettle1

I love those ads. It reminds me of the old CO. Pure nostalgia. The good old days.

notquiteaff

Granted, I haven't flown on a UA 737 in about a year, but in the past it seemed like the screen would turn themselves back on at least once or twice. I don't know or recall if it was tied to a reset or a commercial or something else.

In fairness, AS does the CC announcement and walk down the aisle today, too. It really doesn't bother me too much.

MY-OTHER-BROTHER-"TED"

Over the past month I've seen those dudes saw down and drop the same tree in the middle of the road about 50 times. It was all practice just in case it really happened for real sometime, and the mountain men just happened to be off huntin' up some grub in another area of the wilderness. Believe it or not, every single time, the story miraculously ended the same. Kept my eyes glued to the tube all the way from BOS to SFO and, I'll be dogged if them people didn't manage to move that dad-gumed tree out of the road for the women folk. Didn't even need to scan my card as they messed up and played it over and over about every 29 minutes for FREE!

Hee, Hee, Hee!!!

3Cforme

Cathay Pacific was doing it in long-haul Business class fifteen years ago.

How many people who complain about this on FT also complain in writing to UA?

JBord

I agree, it doesn't bother me when I'm awake and just don't want to watch. I often forget to turn mine off in fact. On my last flight, the woman in the middle seat kept her elbows on both her controls and my controls the entire flight. The screens were either scrolling through the menus, or the volume control was going up and down, or something was happening on the screen, which I found distracting and annoying for some reason. I've also paid to watch a football game on a Sunday flight and all of a sudden hear the volume spiking in my headphones, thanks to the middle seat passenger.

MY-OTHER-BROTHER-"TED"

I don't think that discussing something on FT is necessarily a "Complaint!" People can certainly mention that they don't like ad's in their face, for the duration of their flight, without requiring them to make a BIG deal out of it. Besides, a letter written to UAL regarding this matter will most likely end up in the round file, anyway!