EMMA KELLY / LONDON
Australians put $155 million upgrade into service, while African airline flies Boeing 767 equipped with Rockwell's TES
Qantas has put its first Boeing 747-400 equipped with Rockwell Collins Total Entertainment System (TES) into service between Australia and the UK. The installation is part of a A$300 million ($155 million) investment in TES which will see the interactive in-flight entertainment (IFE) system flying on 24 of the airline's international 747-400s by the end of 2002.
At the same time, the first of three Kenya Airways Boeing 767-300s equipped with TES has entered service.
In Qantas first class TES provides 12 film channels, six television channels, 10 games, the Airshow moving map, text news and weather channel and 16 audio channels with CD-quality sound. The system features an 185mm (7.4in) touchscreen mounted in the seat sidewall, in-seat telephone and in-seat power for laptop computers. First class also features a personal video player with a library of a further 50 film titles.
Business class passengers get the same entertainment/communication services as first class apart from the personal video player. The economy class cabin is fitted with 145mm (non-touch) screens, seven film channels, five television channels, 10 games, Airshow services, 16 audio channels and in-seat telephone. Two telephones are also mounted in the rear of each cabin.
The entry into service of TES with Qantas follows a long journey to seat-back IFE for the Australian carrier. Qantas first picked now-defunct Interactive Flight Technologies' In-Flight Entertainment Network as its preferred IFE system, but the order was rejected by the airline's board in 1997 following concerns with interactive IFE.
A year later the airline planned to follow its 25%-owner British Airways with a TES order after evaluating IFE systems with BA, but Qantas then deferred its plans. The TES commitment finally came in March last year as part of a wider A$400 million product upgrade.
Kenya Airways' 767-300, meanwhile, is equipped with TES throughout the aircraft in distributed mode, providing 12 channels of video entertainment and eight audio channels via 160mm LCD displays. The aircraft is provisioned for audio- and video-on-demand (A/VOD), equipped with the video control centre configured for the future acceptance of the Ethernet hub and file servers.
Many TES customers - Aer Lingus, Airtours, American Airlines, BA, Delta Air Lines, Japan Airlines (JAL), TAM and Thai Airways International - have systems provisioned for upgrade to A/VOD, but only Air France and LanChile are offering the service so far, with JAL and TAM set to follow. It lets passengers start, stop, rewind and fast forward IFE programming.
Source: Flight International
