Bjorn’s Corner: Modern IFE

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm

04 December 2015, ©. Leeham Co: During the last two weeks I have been busy explaining how a mid-life long range aircraft is refurbished. The articles have been about how to prepare 10 year old Boeing 777-200ER and Airbus A340-300 for their second half of life.

One of the things that must be done is updating the part of the aircraft that meets the customer, the cabin. Most passengers don’t know much about the aircraft they are flying, but they can tell you if the seats were comfortable, if there was enough leg space and if the movies on the entertainment system were any good.

This means that if the cabin is brought up to a modern standard with lie-flat business seats, refreshed interior surfaces and textiles, and if there is a personal IFE unit with good content, the passenger will not reflect over that he flies an old aircraft.

Such refreshes cost a lot of money. Without changing all items in a 300 seat cabin, one is easily at between $5m-$10m for material and installation. One of the problems when wishing to keep existing seats, for economic reasons, is that it is virtually impossible to implement in-seat IFE to an existing seat. Luckily there are other solutions. Read more

Vote for the Worst Airplane/Airport Movie

The nominations are in. Now it’s time to vote for the Worst Airplane/Airport Movie. There is a separate poll for the Best Airplane/Airport Movie. A few movies appear on both lists, reflecting a difference in opinions.

We’re going to hide the results until voting is complete.

Nominations Wanted for the Best airliner/airport type movie

Let’s lighten up over the Christmas holiday and get some good reader participation.

How about submitting as many nominations as you want for the Best Movies involving airliners and/or airports. These can be as recent as Denzel Washington’s “Flight” or as old as…whatever.

These can be dramas such as The High and the Mighty or spoofs such as Airplane. We’re also going to allow Island in the Sky, which although a war movie used DC-3s/C-47s, which of course are airliners. The Terminal is an example of an “airport” movie. The Castaway, while having an airplane a key element and having a major scene at the Memphis Airport, isn’t really a movie that falls into either category.

Make your case in nominating these movies. When it appears nominations have petered off, we’ll compile them into a poll for voting.

We also have a separate poll for the Worst Airplane Movie.

Nominations Wanted for the Worst airplane/airport movies

Let’s lighten up over the Christmas holiday and get some good reader participation.

How about submitting as many nominations as you want for the Worst Movies involving airliners and/or airports. These can be as recent as Denzel Washington’s “Flight” or as old as…whatever.

These can be dramas such as Airport 77 or Airport 79: The Concorde or spoofs such as Airplane 2. Or they can be really ridiculous plots such as Snakes on a Plane. (You can guess a few of our nominations for Worst Airplane Movies….)

Make your case in nominating these movies. When it appears nominations have petered off, we’ll compile them into a poll for voting.

We also have Nominations for the Best Airplane/Airport movies.