US Airways to remove all movies from it’s fleet

by Grant Martin on

If you were one of the last six people in the country that thought that US Airways was cool, you now have a reason to jump ship: the Tempe, Arizona based company just announced that it was abandoning all of its domestic In Flight Entertainment (IFE) systems and that it will further scrap any plans of ever implementing any.

The culprit, they claim, is the five hundred pounds of extra weight that the systems add to each aircraft, thus taking more fuel to fly around the country.

US Airways: I know that your focus groups and business travelers don’t place that high of a priority on In Flight Entertainment because they like to work on their laptops or crackberry around. But this is AMERICA. Our favorite national past time is watching television. We love it. And the 90% of people that don’t have a laptop, Blackberry or Malcom Gladwell’s last piece of non-fiction are going to get PISSED when their TV’s go away. Do yourself a favor and save one of the last things that you had over the other legacy carriers with no IFE.

If you were still booked on an overseas US Airways flight, you can take down your craigslist posting for your tickets down and breathe a sigh of relief for now — only domestic IFE is going away. But at this rate, who knows how long the airline, proper, is going to last.

The best of in-flight entertainment

by Martha Edwards on

Remember the days when the in-flight entertainment was watching the drool trickle down the chin of your snoozing dad and hoping it landed on the arm of your little sister? Or the days when you were so excited to see an in-flight movie, only to find out that it was showing on one TV screen 20 rows up and the headphones they gave you didn’t work anyway?

In-flight entertainment has come a long way since then. In fact, it’s too good — I stayed awake on flight from New Zealand to LAX catching up on movies like Borat and The Departed, and ended up being so tired afterwards that I almost missed my connecting flight because I was sleeping so soundly on the floor of LAX (Ew. And as an added bonus I crushed my glasses when I rolled onto them — now they’re permanently crooked.)

But entertainment can mean the difference between a tedious flight and an enjoyable — it really makes a difference on how satisfied a customer is with the airline, if you ask me. Want to know which airlines have the best in-flight entertainment? ProTraveller recently ranked them, and here’s the run-down:

  1. Virgin America
  2. Emirates
  3. Singapore Airlines
  4. JetBlue Airlines
  5. Virgin Atlantic
  6. Qantas
  7. Cathay Pacific
  8. British Airways
  9. Japan Airlines
  10. United Airlines

Want to find out why they made the list? Click here.

Flight attendant gives hilarious safety message

by Jamie Rhein on

Happy Monday and this should perk you up. If you’ve ever spaced out during the flight attendant safety talks and casually wondered if perhaps you should actually look at the card in the seat pocket in front of you, here’s a video that will remind you exactly how many exit doors there are–and everything else you need to know in case of an emergency. All the information is accurate, it’s the delivery that gets your attention. Here’s a sample.

“If you don’t like our service, the flight gets too long, we have 6 emergency exits–2 at the front, 2 over window doors, and 2 at the rear–signs over head–lights on the floor– leave through those exits.”

The life vest, the seat becoming a floatation device, the oxygen mask and that seat pocket instruction are all covered. Thanks, Marilyn Terrell, our friend at Intelligent Traveler, for sending this hilarious gem our way. And thanks to rodizzl for recording the attendant and posting it on You Tube. Stellar.

How Many Movies Have You Watched On One Flight?

by Kelly Amabile on

I’m not exactly embarrassed to admit this, but I’m not sure if it is something to be proud of either?! On a recent 13-hour Qantas flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles, I managed to watch five movies in a row, and could have probably snuck in a sixth if my eyes were not so weary. And for some reason, I feel compelled to admit that I engaged in this obscene in-flight marathon film fest. I’m actually quite curious to know about the movie-watching habits of other long-haul fliers out there.

Who else will ‘fess up?

I had only planned on watching one movie, and then figured I’d pop some Sudafed Nighttime pills to knock me out. But the drugs never kicked in after my own private screening of No Reservations. Or maybe deep in my psyche I knew that I just HAD to watch Blades of Glory before bedtime. After that, I blame it on the seat — I just couldn’t get comfortable. Or was it that burning desire to watch License to Wed and Evan Almightly?! By the time I got to Borat I had really surpassed my (or any normal sleep-deprived human’s) film-viewing limit and should have certainly been fast asleep…but once you start watching that movie, you just can’t stop. My cranium hurt and my eyes were surely bugging out of the sockets by then, but I had to know if Borat would ever get his dream date with Pamela!

So who else has been hooked by their in-flight entertainment system? Please tell me that I am not the only who has denied herself sleep on a plane in order to catch up on all the romantic comedies and mockumentaries she’d been missing? I had brought a good book with me on the plane, as well as my laptop, so I could organize the photos from my trip. Instead, the in-flight entertainment system got me good, proving to be a much stronger drug than the decongestant I thought would have brought me at least a few good hours of sleep.