According to Australian Business Traveller, Virgin Australia has completed their pilot and it obviously went well they are rolling out Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets to aircraft servicing the majority of their domestic and short-haul network including trans-Tasman flights this month. The tablet will be available free of charge to business class customers and on flights over three hours in length to flexi far guests -subject to availability. No comment on if economy class would have access to the tablets.
The tablets will come pre-loaded with a range of TV Shows(Air Crash Investigations?), Movies(Flying High?) and Music however Virgin advised that later this year they will be offering streaming using technology from Lufthansa Systems of content from Lufthansa Systems over WiFi to users own personal tablets and devices as well as the Galaxy Tab 10.1’s they are rolling out now. Personal devices will include iPads, iPhones and most importantly Android devices both tablets and phones via an app. They will also stream to Windows and Mac laptops.
Looks like I’ll be flying Virgin for the forseeable future, although I really just want access to in-flight WiFi such as they have in the US, although when I asked them about it via Twitter they advised ‘Hi Daniel, we don’t have any details of this yet. Infrastructure & technology in AU currently makes it expensive and difficult’. So I don’t see that coming soon. Anyway, does this influence your carrier of choice when flying?
This doesn’t influence who I fly with in the least.
For me, unless I absolutely can’t avoid it, I only fly on Virgin.
It’s just a shame that the rollout is for 3 hour flights and longer. BNE-SYD is 1hr 30min, and BNE – MEL is 2hr 30min.