Dutch low-cost carrier Transavia has begun a trial of the AirFi box that will enable passengers to access and buy in-flight entertainment content and order food and beverages from their seats.
Transavia is trialling AirFi’s solution on board its Boeing 737 aircraft based at Rotterdam The Hague Airport in the Netherlands. The carrier, a subsidiary of Air France-KLM, operates an average of 85 flights a week from the Dutch city to destinations across Europe and Morocco.
The work is part of AirFi’s commitment to offer a truly successful “Mall in the Sky” experience for Transavia, by using the trial to research multiple factors, such as the passengers’ willingness to pay and conversion rates, to further optimise the platform for the airline while delivering value-added products and services that travellers want and need.
In addition to passengers being able to order food and beverages to their seats from their own personal mobile devices, a broad selection of new-release films from Hollywood and around the world will be made available for purchase via the AirFi streaming platform.
In Quotes
Job Heimerikx, AirFi’s CEO, commented:
“It’s a great pleasure to be working with our long-standing partner Transavia at their Rotterdam base, which is just a stone’s throw away from our HQ. We are excited to see how passengers interact with our “Mall in the Sky” concept, which we designed to simultaneously enhance the passenger experience and airlines’ ancillary revenues. Transavia has always been at the forefront of these kinds of innovations, so we are looking forward to delivering a highly professional pilot for them.”
This could be interesting
We’ve seen AirFi roll out its mall in the sky concept with other airlines – but there is a bit more to unpack – namely, the trial of purchasable IFE.
We know that some systems in the world use this method to provide a paid gateway for passengers to access content. Systems like this will need to be fluid to the user, whilst providing value for that paid IFE product – be it a movie, TV show or the like.
And there could be the challenge – getting someone to open their wallet to watch paid-for entertainment.
As travellers will use tablets or phones, there’s a strong chance they’ve pre-loaded something, so there will be more than a few barriers to overcome.
From a technology viewpoint, there is integrations between AirFi and Transavia, which already uses the airline technology provider’s Connected Crew platform for onboard sales.
I’ll be interested to see the conversion ratio of a browser to purchaser on this platform.
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