Air Canada is expanding its inflight entertainment (IFE) selection through exclusive partnership agreements with Crave (Bell Media’s premium entertainment service) and Stingray, a Canada-based multi-platform audio service. The new offerings form part of a strategy to enhancement the airline’s IFE system, and will increase the content selection by 50% on certain aircraft types, including many of its longest-haul wide-body Boeing 777s and 787s, as well as Air Canada Rouge’s A319s, A321s and Boeing 767s. Indeed the airline says that it now offers enough content that a customer would have to fly around the world 22 times to watch and listen to all of it.
The IFE content from Crave includes Vida and The Girlfriend Experience from Starz, Showtime’s Billions, Ray Donovan, and The Affair, the Crave original comedy Letterkenny and Comedy Central’s Broad City. From Stingray comes a wider range of music content, including concert and music documentaries, music video playlists, artist interviews, award show coverage and Stingray Ambiance, featuring videos of travel destinations set to soothing soundtracks. On Air Canada mainline flights, Stingray audio content will be available in a variety of genres, including pop, country, hip-hop and wellness. As a special introductory offer, Air Canada customers can take advantage of a free three-month trial of Stingray Music, using promotional code AirCanada at www.stingray.com/promo until the end of September.
“Air Canada is significantly boosting the selection of movies and television shows it currently offers on its newest mainline wide-body and narrow-body aircraft types. These upgrades will give customers, including those on our longest flights, greater choice than ever before, with access to full season boxsets of shows such as How I Met Your Mother, full collections of movie franchises including Harry Potter and the Matrix, more new releases from Disney and expanded content from HBO,” said Andrew Yiu, VP of product at Air Canada. “To help customers select and manage their entertainment options, we are also progressively introducing a new user interface that will be easier to navigate and available in 15 languages.”
Later this year, increased content will also come to Air Canada’s Airbus A330 fleet with the addition of upgraded servers.
Fun facts about Air Canada’s IFE system:
- To consume all the IFE content on board Air Canada in June, customers would have to fly Toronto to Hong Kong 72 times or around the world 22.5 times
- Over 90% of passengers engage with the IFE systems
- At over four hours, the longest movie onboard is Cleopatra (1963)
- The most watched movie of the year thus far is Bohemian Rhapsody
