Last week, all the talk was about American filing for bankruptcy. That announcement mostly buried what should have been a much bigger and more exciting announcement than it was. American is doing some great things on its new 777s, but it’s barely talking about it. The silence makes you wonder if the airline just started talking about to in order to counter the bad news and not because it was ready.

American started by ordering a couple of the 777-300ER aircraft awhile back, but it has now grown the order to include 10 airplanes. This will be the new flagship of the international fleet, which currently comprises 777-200s, 767-300s, and some 757-200s. Service starts next year to London, but that’s all we know. What’s so special about this airplane, which will have the most seats and longest range in the fleet?

“Wi-Fi capability to keep customers connected while traveling internationally”
American has domestic wifi, but it hasn’t talked about international wi-fi at all up until now. American wouldn’t comment on who would provide wifi.

“walk-up bar stocked with snacks and refreshments in the premium cabin will be a first for any U.S. airline “
Most US airlines haven’t been able to justify using space for a bar instead of just having more seats, but apparently American now feels otherwise.

“Entertainment options including up to 120 movies, more than 150 TV programs and more than 350 audio selections”
You can get audio/video on demand in the premium cabins, but the 767s and 757s still have overhead screens in coach. The 777s have looping movies in-seat, which is slightly better, but it’s nothing compared to what the new 777-300s will have.

“every seat will feature individual 110 volt AC power outlets and USB jacks”
Today, most of American’s international fleet has those cigarette lighter power ports that require adapters in the premium cabin. In coach, some airplanes have random seats with scattered access to power, but most have nothing.

“feature an updated and enhanced version of the customer-favorite Flagship Suite seat that transforms into a fully lie flat six-foot, eight-inch bed with drop-down armrests that allow for easier access and more sleeping space”
The 757s and 767s don’t have First Class, but the 777s do. This will just be an updated and improved version of that.

“Business Class cabin will also be outfitted with fully lie flat seats – all with aisle access”
Today, American offers that uncomfortable angled lie-flat seat that was obsolete the day it was announced. The airline is finally going to go to what I assume to be a truly flat bed. I say that I assume it’s flat, because the terminology used (“fully lie flat”) is a mix of the traditional “lie flat” (which means angled) and “fully flat” (which means fully flat). I couldn’t get any other information.

“monitor positioned in each Business Class suite”
The angled lie flat beds the airline has today uses a portable unit that’s fitted into a bracket on the seat. So American is getting rid of that and going back to an embedded system.

“Seats throughout Economy Class will have a higher recline pivot, providing increased knee room. The seat bottom will articulate”
This could go one of two ways. Cathay Pacific went with the seat that reclines into itself, and, well, people hate it with a passion. But the idea isn’t a bad one, if it’s done right. Will this be done right?

“American will also offer an Economy Class premium seat product, which will include additional legroom for seats in the forward portion of the cabin”
With United having Economy Plus and Delta having a similar Economy Comfort offering, it’s not a surprise that American is trying this. But will the seat be any different? Will the service be any different? Beats me. No other info was given, though it sounds like it will probably be the same seat.

Reading this, you probably have the same first question I did . . . . Will American roll this out to the rest of the fleet? No clue. I also found out there are no pictures available, and there are really no other details to be had. This announcement, full of tremendously interesting yet incomplete news, has to stand on its own for now. Bummer.

Other than the press release, I did see an email was sent to AAdvantage members, but there hasn’t been much media coverage. Why? No pictures and not a ton of details. Why would you announce such major enhancements like that if you’re American? This is a big deal, and it makes American at least competitive and at best a true leader when compared to its other US competitors. The lack of additional information just seems so strange.

Anyone else have any info about this? Because it sounds fantastic, assuming it happens.

[Hangar photo via Flickr user kevin dooley/CC 2.0]

Airline Wi-Fi Check: Which Have It? – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
In light of United’s announcement that it was putting wifi on its whole mainline fleet, it seemed like a good time to do a wifi roundup to see who has it and where.

United and Continental Merger Will Make Flying to Europe Easier – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
United is doing some interesting things with its new combined fleet, and that means new destinations from Dulles that couldn’t be served before.

United fliers, rejoice. Your airline has now, finally, announced its comprehensive wifi plan. The result is . . . a little surprising, actually. I like it, to some extent, but it’s also going to create a divided onboard product. We still need more details before I can make a true judgment on this.

The plan is this. United will install wifi from Panasonic on “more than 300″ aircraft in the domestic AND international fleet. That’s really the big news here. United will be the first American airline to put wifi on long haul international flights as well as domestic.

Today, United sadly has wifi only on its tiny fleet of p.s. airplanes that go back and forth between New York and both LA and San Francisco. Oh, and there might be that one 757 still roaming around testing Row 44′s system but I’d be surprised if that was still in service. Starting next year, United will finally play catch up.

You’ll remember that United said it would put wifi on the Continental pre-merger fleet that has LiveTV onboard. That’s not changing, and LiveTV will still be doing it. But the rest of the fleet is going a different way, with Panasonic.

The LiveTV deal uses a Ka band satellite which was just recently put into orbit to cover the US. Ka is notable in that it should be faster and significantly less expensive, but it hasn’t exactly been put into heavy use yet. I believe it also doesn’t have coverage as far-reaching as Ku at this point. Ku band is what Panasonic is going to be installing on the United fleet. I will be very curious to see how pricing comes out. Ku band isn’t very cheap.

We can look across the Pond to United’s partner Lufthansa to see how this might turn out. Lufthansa has been installing what it calls FlyNet on its airplanes where the rate is €10.95 (~$15) for one hour or €19.95 (~$27.50) for 24 hours. Could there be a joint subscription offering that would work on both airlines? That would make sense since people are supposed to be able to interchangeably use Lufthansa and United across the Atlantic, and it would be very welcome. But I’m not holding my breath for that just yet. I will be very curious to see how similar United’s pricing is.

One other piece that’s not exactly clearly is that we don’t know exactly how this is going to work out in terms of which airplanes will get this. The airline says more than 300 aircraft including the A319, A320, 747, 757, 767, 777, and 787 will get the service. Right now, there are 150 A319/A320 aircraft alone and another 140 or so 757s. Add in the 150 747/767/777 aircraft plus whatever 787s will come in the door and you have WAY more than 300 airplanes.

My guess here is that we’ll see a lot of pre-merger United 757s disappear as they get retired. Maybe some of the A319/A320 aircraft will be pushed out when leases expire as well. All we know is that by the end of 2015, the entire mainline fleet will have wifi, but I imagine that means the mainline fleet is going to either a) be smaller than it is today or b) have more 737s come in equipped with LiveTV to even this out. Lots to ponder here.

So is this good? Well sure, in theory. But as I mentioned, Ku band isn’t cheap so I will reserve judgment until I see how it’s going to be priced. Wifi is great, but super-expensive wifi isn’t going to win any friends. I asked Panasonic about the Ku vs Ka decision. The response was that the company “will offer an upgrade that will optimize our existing eXConnect solution for Ka.” I asked a follow-up question to better understand if it was an easy and painless upgrade or not and I received no response.

One last nugge of interest. United was quick to note that “The system will also enable wireless streaming of video content.” Remember that United announced that instead of putting in seat video into the 747s, it would just offer streaming of content. Makes you wonder if the plan for the 787 might be the same. That would be a radical change, especially this early in the game since there are still plenty of travelers without their own devices.

In the end, this means that everyone will get wifi onboard a United mainline aircraft, but that doesn’t mean the offering will be standardized. The domestic Continental airplanes, as with Delta’s fleet, will have LiveTV, movies, wifi, etc. The United domestic fleet, as with Northwest’s fleet, will just have wifi.

All in all, this is good news, but there are plenty of unanswered questions.

While I was up in Seattle for the APEX expo, I got invited to something fun. Dubai-based low cost carrier flydubai took delivery of its latest 737 from Boeing. It was following that up with an install of the new Lumexis inflight entertainment system. I was invited to see the install in progress. If you’ve ever wondered how an inflight entertainment system gets installed, here’s a look at it.

Flydubai took delivery of the airplane and it was immediately sent over to Paine Field in Everett where it would have the inflight entertainment system installed. You might remember Lumexis from my post a long time ago. That’s the company that introduced a fiber optic system that goes direct to the screen instead of via those bulky boxes that often block your legroom. The capacity of these wires is tremendous in that you can watch on a big screen in high definition. It’s a beautiful sight. The simple system makes it easier to install than a traditional inflight entertainment system, but it still does take time.

When the airplane gets to the installer’s hangar, it sits outside but is pulled forward into a bay where the nose sits (above). This allows the workers to get on and off the airplane inside – it also allows them to keep the seats nice and dry in the perenially-wet Pacific Northwest (below).

You can see the seats are all wrapped up – these are new seats that have the screens installed in them. (flydubai is also proud to say that these are the only seats with a painted seat recline button.)

Before these seats can go into the airplane, they have to install all the wiring. So walking in, we found an airplane that’s not nearly ready for primetime. We were early in the 3 day installation process so there was a lot of exposed area (below) that the customer will never see.

Some of this stuff was interesting to see from the side not usually seen by travelers. Below, you’ll see the back side of the passenger service units. You can see the air conditioning vents, the oxygen masks, and on the right, they’ve put life vests where the space is for a traditional drop-down screen for entertainment. (No need for those on this bird.)

The wiring itself comes from the front of the airplane where the head-end unit is installed. Wires go back through the ceiling so you’ll never see them, but there are surprisingly few wires anyway since fiber optics have a lot of capacity. Below is a shot of the entire bundle toward the front of the airplane. Wires start peeling off to go to each row until there’s nothing left in the bundle at the end of the airplane.

Some of those wires go off to power units in every few rows. These are in the sidewall of the airplane (below). They use electricity from the aircraft to power the entertainment systems. Since they sit in the sidewall, a passenger will never see them. Wires just come out to each row of seats from the unit, but that’s all covered well once the seats are installed.

That’s about it for the cabin. There are some units installed down in the avionics bay under the passenger floor. As you can see (below), they are small and barely take up any room down there.

And that’s really about it, believe it or not. Once they finish with this wiring, they can start putting the cabin back together. The seats will follow and then the system will work like magic, or something like that. This aircraft has certainly already been in Dubai for awhile, flying throughout the system which includes some pretty exotic places, by the way. I didn’t realize how quickly flydubai got big but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

If you want to try the Lumexis system for yourself, flydubai is your best bet right now. Transaero out of Russia is also installing the system and there are more on the way.

As I mentioned yesterday, the big buzz at the APEX expo last week was around wireless entertainment. Can it really take over for the existing airline-provided systems? Will the old systems go away entirely? I think the predictions of the death of airline-provided entertainment are far rosier than reality, but eventually, it will happen.

Something like Virgin America’s new system could replace wired systems. For the customer, it’s not really any different since there are still seatback screens. But when talking about wireless, most people are talking about providing a connection and maybe some content but then pushing the requirement for having a device on to the customer.

In one of the APEX education sessions, it was even proclaimed that the age of seatback devices would be over in five years. That’s just absurd.

It’s easy for a tech-savvy 20 or 30 something to say that airline provided devices won’t matter in five years, because that group is full of early adopters who already have the equipment needed to take advantage of any connectivity offered on an airplane. But what about the rest of the population? In five years, there will still be a tremendous number of travelers who can’t do it. Will the airlines just ignore them? No.

That doesn’t mean this won’t happen in 30 years, or even 20. As time goes on, there will be fewer people who aren’t connected. Eventually, it seems obvious to me that people will be able to provide their own devices and the airlines and entertainment companies can just focus on content. At most, they can offer some devices for rent while flying for the handful who will live under a rock 30 years from now (yet still fly).

That trend to focus on content is already starting to take hold. Both Gogo and Row 44 used to be pure internet providers. They provided the “pipe” and then travelers could take advantage of the web. But that wasn’t a long term strategy.

Gogo has launched its Gogo Vision offering which American has announced it will roll out on its entire wifi-equipped fleet. You can already try it out if you’re flying between JFK and both LAX and San Francisco on the airline. You’ll find a bunch of movies and TV shows available just like you would on a seatback system. Gogo charges from $.99 to $3.99 as introductory pricing – expect movies to probably settle around $6 or $7 in the long run.

This system doesn’t require signing up for internet access – that’s a separate option.

Meanwhile, Row 44 has also jumped into the content game. It’s a bit earlier for these guys so we don’t know what it’s going to look like yet, but we do know that several studios have signed up to allow Row 44 to stream their stored content to passengers, for a fee of course.

Row 44 has taken it a step further by offering streaming TV signals from the ground via the internet. A few stations including MSNBC, BBC World News, and Bloomberg have agreed to let the airline stream live TV to passengers. And there’s even a deal with Major League Baseball to stream live games.

As aircraft get higher internet bandwidth with newer technologies, these types of things will become even easier to deliver. LiveTV, the company that provides television on JetBlue and Continental, among others, is getting itself ready for this day.

Once it starts rolling out its first wifi-equipped aircraft next year (both JetBlue and the old Continental fleet have been committed to this), you would think it would be easy to just let people watch TV from their own devices. Heck, they don’t even need internet – they already have the pipe to the aircraft with TV so they just need a wireless access point to distribute it.

So what are the big drawbacks to people eventually bringing their own devices? I can think of two.

1. Power – If the airline doesn’t provide power, then passenger-provided devices will still not be ideal. There’s always talk about how batteries are getting better and better, but I don’t buy it. As batteries get better, usage goes up. Why does my phone today last for a shorter time than mine 10 years ago? The battery is better, but it uses a lot more juice. And then there’s the fact that people can’t guarantee that they’re fully charged before a flight. Power is still necessary.
2. The 10,000 foot problem – Airline provided systems can be used at any time, but passenger-provided devices can only be used above 10,000 feet. People really do want their “gate to gate” entertainment. Something will need to be figured out – maybe some sort of clamping device that can fix a personal device to the seatback. I’m not sure.

Eventually, these will all be worked out and the seatback entertainment device will be a thing of the past. I just think it’s going to take a long longer than the most aggressive proponents predict.