A few weeks back I hopped onto my first Virgin America flight with Aircell’s Gogo service on-board. It wasn’t the first time I’ve reviewed Gogo and if you recall I was on the first commercial Gogo flight with American Air. The plan was to interview James Weatherson, Virgin America’s inflight entertainment engineer, while I was up in the air, but there was a scheduling mix up and the interview never went down. So we opted to do it the old fashioned way. Below is my brief conversation with James about Red and where it’s headed.
CrunchGear: Other than some content changes, I haven’t seen a whole lot of new stuff for Red. What can we expect to see this year from VX?
James Weatherson: Actually, we’re now right in the middle of a Red software upgrade that will allow us to create an even more robust entertainment content platform at every seat. Our platform is actually pretty new and ambitious for a system at 37,000 feet in-flight, so the upgrades that will go live this Summer are mainly focused on improving functionality, reliability and the speed of the Linux-based system. We’re aiming to increase the speed of the system and usability, as well as allow us to further build out the content platform. So we’re planning more video games, movies and other content in the latter half of 2009 thanks to these upgrades. And we’re also making some changes that came as suggestions from guests who emailed us in-flight via the Red feedback in-box, like being able to listen to your music play-list and play video games at the same time and giving business travelers receipts for their food – so when they swipe their credit card at their seat, they’re emailed a receipt. You’ll be able to do that as of June. The former is a relief for me, as the sound effects on DOOM for some reason get super annoying when you reach hour three of a transcon flight.
CG: Are the shopping and book services going live this year?
JW: Yep, once we get these software upgrades in place we plan to go live with the Shop platform in late 2009, with the Read section to follow. Stay tuned.
CG: I heard a nasty rumor that VX was thinking of getting rid of the touch-screens because the majority of passengers don’t know how to use a touch-screen. Any truth to that?
JW: No, we don’t plan to go retro on you on Red. Most of our guests are pretty tech-savvy and a lot of them have an iphone or other touchscreen PDA on them when they fly, so they work the system just fine. We do actually mention the importance of a “soft touch” in both our in-flight guide (attached) about the Red system and our flight teams also mention it when they explain how the system works. It has not really been a problem, but the interface just works better with light tapping, as opposed to thumping – just like an itouch or iphone. However, we are disabling the touch-screen on the games only, as the remotes just work better – that change goes live with our Summer upgrades in June.
CG: Maybe VX should make a video for people to watch that shows them how to use the touch-screen. I know I can’t stand people who sit behind me and punch the screen. What do you think?
JW: I like the video idea! We’ve got a depiction of that in our in-flight guide (PDF), and the caricature is of our head of web marketing, Jen Larson, because it is her pet peeve. If we do a video, we got to think of an appropriate spokesperson who could demonstrate that almost anyone can use Red. Maybe a Miss USA contestant?
CG: Anything else we can look forward to that you can talk about?
JW: We’re focusing pretty aggressively on our fleet-wide WiFi roll-out. We’ll be the first and only airline to have it on every single flight by this Memorial Day (it is now on 24 of 28 planes). And we just became the first airline to offer absinthe in-flight. Although, on second thought: the image of guests twittering at 37,000 ft while drinking absinthe is somewhat disturbing.
Pretty good interview, short and sweet. I love the idea of a video also, and having a section dedicated towards how to touch the screen, I would be very angry if the person behind me continued to move my seat.
I am not sure serving absinthe on board a commercial airline that is 37,000 feet in the air is such a good idea. Some passengers can’t even contain themselves with the alcoholic beverages that are available now.
I’m really looking forward to the speed and usability improvements. Conceptually I love the system. But it can be pretty awkward to use.
Am on Virgin now as I read this. RED certainly is solid — when it works. On this flight, TV isn’t working (satellite is down). I liked RED, but want to see if get better.
My suggestions:
1) have a status notice that appears when some part of the system isn’t working. Satellite down? You should see the notice when you click TV and see a black screen. This will prevent passengers from thinking they did something wrong (did I press TV on/off, media player?, did I have to pay?)
2) the status should be something the crew can change in flight to notify passengers of other issues (AC is cycling, please be patient and we will reboot the system in 30 minutes, or we are experiencing a delay, etc.). Maybe put this on the home screen or info page.
3) chat is okay, but few use it — which makes no one interested in trying the rooms. Under the tab TALK, I would add IM capabilities as well as Twitter / Facebook chat. Charge users $3 for the flight.
4) You need to have movies that are for young young kids (eg < 4 years old). Bolt and Bedtime Stories are for older kids, and families with young kids would pay $$ to have their squirmy ones entertained but not wired up with too much action. Maybe you can get other passengers (the ones without kids and who are about to lose it) to “sponsor” a movie for a parent to show the young kids to shut up :). Think Baby Einstein or Angelina Ballerina. Having non-action packed movies for kids is good idea. Add a drawing game for kids. Nice job on the parental controls.
5) “watch tab” could also include photos : do a deal with Getty, AP, Life archives, etc and allow passengers to go through celebrity, travel, news photos etc. You could also make them city based to show photos of places you may be travelling to. You can cache these and save wifi bandwidth.
6) nit-picking
- if you pay for a movie and then don’t start it, it seems to start automatically. I paid, then didn’t hit the start button while I searched for my headphones. I hit start and the movie was 5 mins in and I couldn’t go back to the start.
- would be nice if you had a $$ next to the menu items that will cost money. We thought games cost $$ but didn’t realize it ’til the end of the flight. Reverse is also true : avoid the disappointment of the customer thinking something is free when it isn’t and you will have happier passengers.
- journey should say “map” to match the button on the outside of the unit.
- would be nice if journey had an estimated time of arrival, as well as connecting gate info
- quick nav doesn’t include journey, settings, or login so it isn’t exactly comprehensive.
- in my media under “section,” music videos are mislabeled as movies. am not really sure what “my media” is for
- you should put a notice that the movie can only be watched one time. I thought I could rewind since there are rewind buttons or resume since that’s what the button says. You should make the remove the resume button if it doesn’t do anything.
-for some reason “info/help” jumps from right side to left side, replaced by “eat”. Confusing.
- you need to manage expectations on when items ordered will be delivered to your seat. Seeing the notice – “will be serving you according to today’s in-flight schedule” – after you paid for it, is a bit confusing. You should notify the passenger before they put the order.
Airlines should stop investing in screens and other in-seat hardware and start investing in power and high-speed internet. In the future, just about everyone will have smartphones, netbooks, laptops, PDAs, etc — and all we’ll need is power and a good internet connection to satisfy our business and entertainment needs.
As we know, Blogs are playing vital role for conveying messages to the Internet World. So bloggers be ready to celebrate and convey the message of greatness of Mothers Day.
Forthcoming Mothers Day is going to be celebrated in several countries across the globe though this month. Mother’s Day is celebrated in different month and dates in different countries. Most countries celebrate Mothers Day on second Sunday in the Month of May. A day set aside each year to recognize and honor mothers. So I wish you all to celebrate that day happy.
Happy Mothers Day
I’ve flown with VA several times, NYC-SF
I am shocked over the choice to use touch screens instead of traditional remotes. It is sometimes impossible to sleep during the flight since people keep banging at their screens on the back of your seat. This became one of the reasons I switched back to Jet Blue actually. I just did not want to risk my sleep.
This is a casualty of 2007-2008 where everything should have a touch screen, no matter if it made sense. It’s like Java in 1999.
Whoops — Somehow my comment didn’t post.
Anyhow, love the idea of gaming on RED. I talked a little bit about the service as I experienced it in March on my blog: http://jackalshorns.blogspot.com/2009/03/gaming-on-virgin-america-in-flight.html
Can’t wait to see new gaming content — there’s really no excuse not to have great content given the supply of high quality, virtually free games out there.
J
“I am not sure serving absinthe on board a commercial airline that is 37,000 feet in the air is such a good idea. Some passengers can’t even contain themselves with the alcoholic beverages that are available now.”
I had what Virgin calls absinthe on a flight last night and it was basically like drinking jaegermeister. I don’t think it had any relation to the real absinthe that we’ve all heard about.
Wonder what happens when you combine absinthe with some of these ideas for “wiki-fying” inflight systems:
http://sparksheet.com/above-and-beyond-airplanes-are-social-media/