Yesterday, Mary Kirby of the RunwayGirl fame told me on Twitter that our previous discussions on iPad being used as an in-flight entertainment system are being realized rather soon. Around the same time, I received a guest post about the future of personal wireless IFEs in airplanes. And couldn’t help post it here immediately.

This guest post is written by Toms Purgailis, who is a student from Riga, Latvia interested in all modes of transport and synergies between transport and land use. He runs blog www.rigmobility.blogspot.com about transport and planning issues in the Baltic states.
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This post is inspired by Shashank’s Can the Apple iPad revolutionize the way airlines do business? and aims to take a step further. I want to share my ideas how to benefit from passenger’s devices and their content, save weight and cash.

A big part of travelers bring their laptops and smart-phones with them on-board for ground activities but use airline’s provided in-flight entertainment system (IFE) to kill the time during flight. No-brainer that such a system is not the most effective as hundreds of gadgets just lay somewhere in bags during the flight.

A simple (and very effective) solution would be to …

This wasn’t just the Easter weekend, it was also the weekend when the iPad hit the stores. Before I could get over the initial frenzy, I saw an article on Mashable that talked about a university buying iPads for all its incoming freshmen! That bold idea got me thinking…does the iPad have the potential of chancing the way airlines do business too?

In fact, there’s been ample debate already, with the queen of in-flight entertainment (IFE), Mary Kirby, concluding that it’s a fad, even as the CIO of JetStar, Stephen Tame was quoted as saying that the iPad “may lead in the future the end of airline in-flight entertainment systems”.

Why does the iPad matter for airlines?
It matters because no longer are mobile devices limited to small screens only centimeters wide, with the iPad. Combine that with the advent of in-flight wifi and we’re talking business.

I’m not talking about every passenger carrying on-board an iPad. That’s probably not possible. At least not very soon, and not across nations. What I’m suggesting is that it might be a good idea for airlines that do not have …

My friend Sergio Mello, of the Satisfly fame, shared with me a very fascinating story of a legacy carrier not acting in a legacy way. And I couldn’t help but write about it here.
Flying is fun this summer!
Asiana Airlines, out of South Korea, is going to offer a very different in-flight experience to its passengers this summer. The in-flight crew on 52 flights will be dressed up as pirates and serve passengers colorful exotic drinks.

There will be eight different teams, providing in-flight entertainment with a difference. These teams will perform magic tricks, tell the future using Tarrot cards, draw passengers’ caricatures and even conduct an on-board fashion show with traditional costumes from popular holiday destinations.

But my favorite is that interested passengers can even “exeprience the life of a flight attendant”. I’m sure that’s going to be popular. Children will get a special treatment too. They’ll enjoy everything from face paint to origami sessions!

The in-flight experience differentiator
When I designed the 6X airline branding model, the basic tenet behind “Brand eXperience” was the fact that airlines, unlike most other brands, have a unique advantage of holding their target audience captive …