Air travel can be boring at the best of time, especially the domestic flights that don’t include any on-board entertainment. Both Virgin Australia and Qantas have somewhat ameliorated this by doling out tablets – iPads for Qantas, Galaxy Tabs for Virgin – but when the majority of passengers already have their own devices it seems a bit unnecessary to hand these devices out, and it seems that Virgin Australia is now starting to stream content to passengers own devices with Qantas looking to follow suit shortly, but only with iOS devices.
According to Australian Business Traveller, they’ve spoken with Virgin Australia who advised in a statement that :
following a successful trial, we are now rolling it out across selected aircraft on our domestic and short-haul international fleet.
Virgin fully supports Android through their Virgin Australia Entertainment App available in Google Play, that utilises a Lufthansa based Audio/Video system offering 300 hours of movies, television shows and music – not a bad offering.
The wireless streaming service is currently available on a few of Virgin’s Boeing 737-800 jets, but they will be rolling it out to more of their domestic 737 planes as well as their Embraer E190 planes by the end of the year. They will also be including the function in the Airbuss A330 that fly their transcontinental coast to coast service.
Unfortunately for Android fans travelling on Qantas, the news is not so spectacular. Despite releasing one of the best looking Android Apps we’ve seen for a while, they will only be supporting iPads, iPhones and laptops on their Q Streaming platform on Qantas flights, and even that will take until Q3 this year.
It’s not the best news, Qantas wise, but if you fly Virgin Australia then this is great news for you. I personally am torn between supporting an Australian carrier – Qantas but if it means a more entertaining flight then Virgin Australia may get my business.
Which is your preferred Airline?
Virgin already have the system on nearly 40 Aircraft, just haven’t announced it yet.. I believe by the end of November it will be installed on almost all the B737 and E190 Aircraft. Over 90 planes. From what I understand QANTAS only have it on 18 A/C in total. Just the 767.
The problem with virgin is it will take over a year for it to be fitted to not even the majority of the fleet, where as with Qantas its already installed on all planes without the screen in the seat, and they give you the iPad to use, not draining your own battery. As much as qantas annoy me, they still have it all over virgin when it comes to entertainment, even with their obsession towards iOS.