Alpha Flight Guru Travel Blog
07.4.2012

Southwest Joins the ‘Live TV’ Ranks

Posted By Wilton0 Comments

Riding an airplane twenty years ago must have been unbearably boring. Nevermind the fact that you would have been riding aboard cutting edge technology that was completely redefining the travel industry, what would you have watched? In the past few years, airlines have begun to boost competition by offering a smorgasbord of online entertainment options that extend far beyond an extra pack of peanuts.

 

Most recently, Southwest Airlines has upgraded their variety of in-flight entertainment to include live television service! Sadly, this doesn’t mean that you can forget TiVo-ing that episode of Grey’s or Auction Kings while you’re some 4,000 feet in the air, but it does mean that you’ll have real time access to seven news and sports channels including NBC Sports, MLB, NFL Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News and Fox Business News. For those of us who tend to live and breathe business, this certainly isn’t a bad thing.

 

To receive access, passengers will merely need to bring along a wi-fi enabled device such as a tablet or iPhone and pay the low-cost fee. Currently, Southwest is running trials with prices between $3-$8. Although this service is only found aboard 5 of the planes in Southwest’s fleet now, they anticipate extending the entertainment add-on to 70% of their planes by the end of 2013.

 

Other airlines, including JetBlue, Frontier, and Virgin America, have been offering this service for years already and with considerably more channels – ranging from 18 to 36. So while although Southwest’s development really isn’t that overwhelming, we do think they’re finally moving in the right direction!