"We Expect To Make Enormous Sums Of Money From This"

[Paracab]

From the BBC website.....

Budget airline Ryanair has announced it is to launch an on-board entertainment service on its flights.
The system - which will allow passengers to watch films, cartoons and classic comedy - will be offered at an introductory price of £5.

Five Stansted based aircraft will trial the service from November and, if successful, will be rolled out across the Ryanair fleet next year.

Passengers who pay will be issued with a 'digEplayer' unit.

On it, they will be able to choose from up to 16 recent Hollywood releases, 13 family programmes, music videos and audio channels.

On Tuesday Ryanair's chief executive, Michael O'Leary, told a news conference that "we expect to make enormous sums of money from this".

Ryanair has its main UK base at Stansted and also flies out of Luton.




Can't see too many pax paying to be entertained given the length of the average FR sector, any thoughts ?

[Flame]

Sounds like a superb product to me, I have seen this "digeplayer" in use on Hawaiian and I believe KLM have them as well, its a superb piece of equipment for those that choose to use it, remember there is more to it than just movies, and pax can decide if they want it or not.

[Basil]

So they'll be banning pax from taking their own portable DVD players on board then :confused:

[Wannabe Flyboy]

As anti-FR as I am, I have to admit that this seems like quite a good idea. Just awaiting the 'We have IFE on short haul! BA doesn't!' adverts now.

Will it be £5 for the whole flight or per programme though? Tom & Jerry anyone...

[brabazon]

As was pointed out in the first post, most Ryanair routes aren't long enough to give enough time to watch a full movie - so who would pay £5 to watch a few episodes of a sitcom or listen to a few tracks of music, cheaper to take your own watchman, Discman or I-Pod on board - unless as was mentioned they're banned!!

[nef]

Never mind the films etc they may show - Who wants to bet that, even if you don't want to cough up £5 to watch something, the screen will remain on for the whole duration of the flight showing a selection of adverts - that's where they'll really malke money!

[MAN777]

As IPods dont use lasers and rely on solid state memory, are they banned on aircraft ? JUst wondering

[JetLag]

Man777.

Ipod's don't have laser but do have a harddisk, not solid state memory. Most other mp3 player do have solid state memory though.

[CargoOne]

Is it just me or MoL contradicts himself? Below is a part from recent interview:

FLUG REVUE: Why have the low-fare airlines been following such a different pattern in Europe and America? The Americans, for example JetBlue, have live TV. And Frontier has big kitchens so that they can serve fresh coffee.

O'Leary: The only reason I can think of is stupidity. There is only one authentic low-cost airline in the USA, and that is Southwest. And only one in Europe, and that is Ryanair. JetBlue may sell cheap tickets, but its profitability is falling back again, as you can see if you look at its business figures.

FLUG REVUE: But JetBlue says it can sell more expensive tickets than the bigger airlines because on a long transcontinental flight people are happy just watching TV.

O'Leary: If live TV and in-flight entertainment were so important, then Southwest would not be around any more. It competes with Continental light and United Express, though not over in-flight entertainment but over price. No passenger has ever paid more in order to get in-flight entertainment. 99 percent of passengers just want the cheapest fare. And that's what they get.

[Powerjet1]

Spend half the flight holding the thing at a funny angle because you can't see the screen properly as the sun is screaming in through the windows due to lack of 'window blinds'.

[Cyrano]

CargoOne:

I suppose the difference is that Ryanair is now offering IFE as an optional paid-for extra rather than increasing the basic fare to include it. After all, they do offer food (of a sort) and drink on board - it's just not included in the basic headline fare they quote (and nor are other optional fripperies like landing charges ;) ). It fits with the "a la carte" model - low basic fare (though they can't claim to be consumer-friendly until they quote the fare including taxes and charges everywhere rather than only in those countries where forced to by law) and then optional extras (food, IFE, etc.)

What I'm still trying to figure out is how this is going to work in practice. Not sure of the average FR block time but I'd be surprised if it's over 2 hours. Of that, at least 15 minutes is going to be taxi/takeoff/final approach/landing, which doesn't leave much time for watching a film, especially if the IFE players don't get handed out until the cabin service starts. They can't hand them out before the safety demo (I assume!).

Incidentally, if anyone is curious about these DigEplayer things (can't remember how they arrange the capital letters ;) ), see here (https://www.digeplayer.com/index.php) .

C.