Budget Carrier Rents PSPs to Passengers

by Josh Lew on

South Africa-based 1time Airlines is a low cost carrier. In order to keep their prices low, they decided against adding any built-in in-flight entertainment in their fleet. Not really a problem, because most of the flights are not lengthy. The bulk of their air time is between their hub in Johannesburg and other South African cities like Durban and Cape Town. 1time does have one longer route from Jo’burg to the Tanzanian city of Zanzibar (approximately 3.5 hours).

The airline has introduced a concept of offering portable entertainment on their planes for rent. On select flights, 1time will be offering PlayStation Portable devices for a nominal fee of 60 rand (about $4.80 US). The rental includes disposable earpieces and last for the duration of the flight. This isn’t the first gimmick for 1time. They also use their extra leg room and leather seats to differentiate themselves from the competition. A novel approach? Other carriers have offered video gaming devices in the past. But this time it is in lieu of in-flight entertainment, not in addition to it.

[Via Travelwires]

Travel with TalkMan for PSP

by Adrienne Wilson on

Here’s a cool little bit from the folks at Cool Hunting looking out for all their soccer pals globally who ran off to the World Cup games with few language skills other than their mother tongue. According to their quick write-up Sony PSP has recently released portable translation software where you’re led through the learning process by a blue cartoon bird named Max. Along with the software comes a microphone so that you can throw out some English and get the translation back in return.

This is pretty neat if you already own a Sony PSP and maybe even a reason to go out and get one now. I did a promotion with the equipment just last year and found that the regular video games (not to mention the many other features) would come in handy on a long flight abroad. As far as the TalkMan software is concerned, you can nab them in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese in stores now.