Vistara soft launches IFE, full rollout by Nov 2015

Vistara, India’s uber new full-service airline, is leaving no stones unturned in providing the best product and experience out there. While they’ve innovated with their food offerings and their loyalty program, Vistara built on a couple of days back at the Aircraft Interiors Expo, currently on going in Hamburg, about their plans to launch IFE on their planes very soon.

While most Indian press just put out a newswire report with hardly any meat to the news, the good folks at Runway Girl Network have a comprehensive coverage on the plans of Vistara. They state:

Indian start-up carrier Vistara will launch BAE’s so-called ‘IntelliCabin’ wireless IFE solution on its Airbus A320 aircraft, and will ultimately offer integrated seat-back Samsung tablets in its business class seats.

How this will be integrated is also a massive project in itself. Since BAE’s IFE solution does not have certification for HIC (Head Injury Criterion) at this moment, tablets with pre-loaded content are being handed out to business class passengers on take-off at this moment. This is in soft-launch at the moment, and will go live across the network as of May 2015. Tablets will be provided to all business class passengers on flights of over 2 hours duration.

However, as of the second-half of 2015, Vistara should be able to provide an in-flight IFE system, which can beam content to your personal electronic device on the plane. For the business class passengers, they still have the option of taking the Samsung Galaxy tablets to view the content.

This is an interesting move. Jet Airways has some planes fitted with in-seat IFE (some AVOD, some not) but does not operate the IFE on domestic flights, and Air India has a lot of short-haul planes (A321s, etc.) with streaming content, however the screen quality is bad. That does mean Vistara’s technology is pioneering but the others can quickly come to terms with Vistara as well by just flicking the switch on.

How many of you have tried Vistara yet and what do you have to say about the Vistara experience?

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About Ajay

Ajay Awtaney is the Founder and Editor of Live From A Lounge (LFAL), a pioneering digital platform renowned for publishing news and views about aviation, hotels, passenger experience, loyalty programs, travel trends and frequent travel tips for the Global Indian. He is considered the Indian authority on business travel, luxury travel, frequent flyer miles, loyalty credit cards and travel for Indians around the globe. Ajay is a frequent contributor and commentator on the media as well, including ET Now, BBC, CNBC TV18, NDTV, Conde Nast Traveller and many other outlets.

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