http://sparksheet.com/above-and-beyond-airplanes-are-social-media/

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.

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 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.

Happy Mothers Day

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.