Indian full service carrier Vistara, a joint venture of Singapore Airlines and TATA group, announced the launch of “Vistara World” which will have more than 70 hours of video and audio content streamed wirelessly onto personal handled devices and laptop in-flight.
“Vistara World” is expected to be rolled out fleet wide in August 2018 and would offer multimedia library that would include music in genres like Pop, Jazz, Blues, Rock, Electronica, English Retro and Indian, Bollywood and Hollywood movies of different categories such as Drama, Romance, Comedy, Thriller, Action, Adventure. The service will also have Indian and International short programs as well as variety of reading material including the in-flight magazine of the airline.
The airline had first announced the roll out of in-flight Wi-Fi services to be completed by December 2015 but the project was left mid-way after trial on just one aircraft. Rival Jet Airways had soon announced that it would provide similar services too and went live with “JetScreen” in September 2016 and has gradually covered most if not all narrow body aircraft. The airline started screening with Airtime application but recently made a move to launch JetScreen from the airline’s own mobile application. Jet Airways claims to provide content of over 200 hours along with flight path and flight details.
While Vistara has not stated if the streaming would be launched from its own app or another app would be required for the passengers, Google Play has listed Vistara World as an application which allows users to watch content on-board aircraft which have Vistara World wireless in-flight entertainment system installed. The mobile application has been developed by Blue Box Aviation, a Scottish company specialising in providing airlines with latest technology for tablet-based and wireless IFE (In-flight Entertainment).
Airlines over the world are slowly shifting to the concept of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) which helps the airline keep their costs low by reducing the hardware on-board and also doing away with expensive upgrades to the hardware along with catering to non-responsive IFE and dissatisfied customers on account of such complaints.
The airline currently has 21 aircraft in fleet and its 22nd aircraft, also the last in its existing order is expected in September. The aircraft is rumoured to feature a special livery and will be registered as VT- ATV. This was also the registration of one of the Douglas DC-3 aircraft in the fleet of TATA Airlines, which was nationalised to become Air India.
PS: NetworkThoughts knows that the airline has also announced changes in its fare offerings. A blog post will be up, when there is more analysis available around it.
NetworkThoughts 