US Airways Dumps In-Flight Movies, Not Enough Passengers Buying $5 Headsets
Too many passengers were bringing their own headsets, so US Airways has discontinued in-flight movies. US Airways had been hoping to switch from their heavy 500lb movie system to lightweight fiber optic personal systems, but that plan has also been axed. New US Airways planes will be delivered with no entertainment system.
Sales of $5 headsets “has gone off a cliff” according to a US Airways spokesperson. “What was economical 18 months ago is not economical today,” he said. “The things we were looking at for tomorrow, in general, have had to be put on hold.”
US Airways has already discontinued free snacks, started charging $2 for beverages that were formerly complimentary, and added a $15 fee to check one bag and an additional $25 fee to check a second bag.
In-flight movies cut at US Airways [Charlotte Observer] (Thanks, Glenn!)
(Photo: Jenna Belle )
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Good to know, as I will be flying them next week. I am already only taking carryon luggage and bringong food with me. Guess now I'll be borrowing a DVD player, too.
Pretty soon we'll be needing carryon bags devoted just to carry stuff with you to occupy yourself on the plane. Which of course means you have to check your actual bag and cough up $15. Curses!
But Sir you must wear the seatbelt it is the law... yes fastening the seatbelt is free, but as I am telling you there is a $50 charge to enable it to be unfastened. If you pay this fee before we depart then you can avoid the $100 seat rental fee for the extra time it will take to process your payment upon arrival...
Do airlines really still try to sell you headsets? When I'm on an airplane, damned near everyone has--at the very least--their own iPod earbuds. And a growing number of people have noise canceling headphones. You know, so you can actually hear the movie. The days of people wanting to wear someone else's skanky headphones are long gone.
Apparently, US Airways' answer to this reality is "Fine, we'll take our ball and go home."
Ouch. This is painful. My parents just flew Austrian Airlines from Dulles to Vienna, using United Airlines points.
Coach class: Free alcohol (all you want), personal large video screens, video games, personal movie selection (10 movies), and according to my frequent-flying dad, the largest coach seats he had ever seen. Not to mention a staff that didn't hate their jobs.
/plug over
//subsidies, etc
US Airways has become "the city bus" with wings.
No amenities, hyper-inflated pricing and adversarial attitude towards customers.
The Lack of in-flight entertainment could be a big deterrent to a lot of travelers on 2+ hour flights.
The pervasiveness of iPods and like mean most travelers will have a set of headphones with them, modeling your entertainment profit strategy on the assumption they wont is pointless.
Flights that have individual entertainment systems at each seat and charge per viewing are a MUCH better model. On a 6 Hour flight, I purchased 2 $5 movies on one of these systems. Used my own iPod Headset and enjoyed it quite a bit.
I had a choice in what I wanted to watch, and even had "free" TV programs as well as in-flight status with GPS navigation over a map with Airspeed and ETA at my finger tips, all on a 7" screen in front of me.
Beats having your head cocked sideways watching the 20 year old TV hanging down in the middle of isle.
so wait they charge for my first bag and they say it's due to weight, but they keep a 500lb movie system that i'd never watch?
US Airways has also just announced that they are no longer offering planes for their flights. Please bring your own wings to the airport.
I just hope they don't confiscate my laptop. Then I'll have nothing to do...
US Airways is the airline that just refuses to die like it should. Nothing they do seems to help, pretty soon we'll be seeing coin operated bathrooms and it's just a matter of time before the pilots corporate card will be declined and he'll have a collection in the main cabin to pay for the fuel.
But we still have those nifty US Airways magazines which tell us all the wonderful things we can do while we're stuck in Charlotte.
@ophmarketing: Airtran still sells headsets to use with their in-flight XM radio, but the plug is a standard stereo plug so you can use your own headphones. If you do end up buying their headphones, they encourage you to take the headphones with you :-)
I liked being able to use my headphones with the radio, the problem was that whenever an announcement was made over the speakers, it also came in through the headphones, and their volume was much louder than the radio. I had to take my headphones off (they're in-ear styled) just to avoid the ear blasts.
What's next, pay-per-use for the on board lavatories??
So I won't be able to watch last year's romantic comedy flop that got 1.5 stars from every reviewer in America? How will I survive the 2 hours from Pittsburgh to Atlanta?
Guess I'm glad I'm moving to Atlanta to deal with Delta instead of Charlotte and dealing with US Air...
The way Delta used to have it, with Song (and I guess JetBlue has), everyone had their own display, and you could pay $5 for a movie from a varied selection, was the best. It keeps everyone occupied (kids included), which made the flight quieter, people were less stressed (and bored), and it was just a much more pleasant experience.
Guess those times are gone...
After flying on Jet Blue for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try not to fly the regular airlines much anymore if possible. As much decent free food and soft drinks throughout the flight as I wanted, free DirecTV, free XM radio (I prefer Sirius but can't be too picky...) and friendly staff. As long as they dont incarcerate you on a tarmacked plane for hours, how can you go wrong (and it was cheaper than the legacies for non-stop from IAD to SAN). Oh yea- bigger seats too :)
I wonder if they're going to remove the movie systems from planes to save on weight. Why the heck does it need to weight 500 pounds?
@backbroken: No kidding. I was thinking of bringing a DVD player with me on my flight anyway because, really, staring off into space is infinitely better than staring at Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey act like wide-eyed morons for 2 hours.
I've flown dozens of times. I always bring a game, or movie, but if I have the window seat, I could stare out the window for days, even when it's cloudy.
@crabbyman6: "Why the heck does it need to weight 500 pounds?"
I'm guessing this is the total weight of the system which would be the video player + all TVs + all cabling to bring audio to every seat + amplifiers for those.
The cabling is not to be overlooked as a significant source of system weight. It seems like just a few small wires but multiply that by something like 10-20 feet for every seat on the plane and it adds up fast. Plus I'm sure there's some shielding requirements to prevent interference from/with flight electronics.
@crabbyman6: And every passenger will now lug aboard an additional 2-3 lbs of personal entertainment equipment and programming (DVDs) rendering any savings of fuel by removing the 500 pound entertainment system null and void.
Just wait until the new planes are delivered with strange proprietary headphone jacks, a different shape for each airline.
Gee, business is bad. Here's a great idea: let's reduce the quality of our product. Yeah, that'll work!
Alaska air has a personal movie player filled with movies and tv shows that you can rent for like 10 bucks and includes headphones, that they don't want back. Its pretty slick actually, because they have the featured movie, plus a few others, so plenty for adults and kids, as well as cartoons and other items. Its an optional item and it works very well, which beats getting random episodes of Wings and Cheers on the big screen.
You could always read a book....Anyone?
@teapartys_over: What? Read?! Screw that!
No, in fact I always take a book with me, but even as an avid reader I can only read for so long before I start to want something else to do. And no, I don't have ADD.
Glad I own a laptop...and a PSP...and a media phone...and a portable DVD player...
I don't really remember ever enjoying the horrible movies they ever offered during a flight anyways. From what I remember, they were most commonly romantic comedies, or a movie that was equally annoying or edited to oblivion to make it G/PG rated.
Ouch, this is definitely the nail in the coffin for me. Flight longer than 3 hours without in-flight movies? Fuck that. I'd rather pull out my toenails with pliers.
@sir_eccles: That used to be the norm. Some airlines even used air tubes to conduct the sound, rather than wires and speakers.
I dunno, it could be worse -- American bombards you with "CBS Eye on American" and infomercials for DVD-based board games, hosted by Kristin Holt. The only thing worse than watching a year-old episode of CSI is watching a year and a half-old Entertainment Tonight "Special" about the year-old episode of CSI that's coming up Next! Of course, that presumes that the 1950s-era "entertainment system" works, as it, the air conditioning, cabin lighting and #2 engine invariably are in need of maintenance, which was scheduled to happen last week, but was deferred for six more months. (Oh, and don't try to lean your seat back, it seems they frequently forget to bolt the seat back to the seat bottom -- as was my wife's seat coming back from our honeymoon -- so, you essentially have a stool, and no seatbelt.)
US airways headsets never worked for me (I bought them twice) and it took forever to get a refund from the harried stewardess.
@sir_eccles: Bah, someone will reverse engineer it and sell adapters for your headphones. It's the American way!
@DrGirlfriend: Same here. I read almost every night, but for some reason I can't pay attention to a book while on a flight.
Mercifully, my two upcoming long haul flights (San Diego and Vegas, out of NY) are both on Virgin America routes. The best part is that once you factor in the extra fees the legacy carriers charge, it's not even that much more expensive.
@Ash78: The foreign carriers almost all have better customer service. We should open up our domestic routes to them.
@crabbyman6: The article says they'll remove them when they do other maintenance. It makes sense. The actual cost of running the system is almost nothing, but 500 extra pounds per plane adds up to a significant amount of extra fuel burned.
@jtheletter: ooh, good call, I didn't even think of the shielding, I bet that adds a significant amount of weight. Are they going to be removing the TVs too, all the flights I was on they used those to show the emergency procedures and such. Maybe if they used LCDs instead of tube TVs they'd be a bit lighter.
Hey, that business model worked for People's Express....er, uh.....
USAirways will never die. A large portion of the Federal Teachers Pension Fund (or something like that) is tied up in US Airways stock. The gov't will never let this airline die out. Personally, I severed ties with this terrible company a few months ago after a nearly year -long battle over them taking double the miles out of my account for a rewards flight. I actually sent my FF card in the mail to them and told them that I was through with their crap.
My first experience with USAir was an emergency landing at Buffalo after they didn't fill the plane with enough fuel in Toronto.
Things just got less worse with future experiences such as a canceled flight at LGA, but we have one at JFK and we won't pay for the cab. Your luggage, well you'll get it eventually.
And of course the logic of going from St. Louis to LaGauardia via Charlotte. TWA was around at the time and the person who made the arrangements knew nothing of air travel and how TWA would have meant a direct flight.
Sometimes I think the wrong airlines went out of business.
Folks, we're talking about flying buses here and the companies that run them. When it costs $300 to fly cross country then the airline that sells you that $300 ticket is going to charge you for baggage, drinks, and probably in the future the air you breath. If you want a pleasant traveling experience than save your pennies and lease a private jet.
One way or another, stop bitching.
The last time I flew I watched my own movies on my iPod, so I don't really care.
In fact, this is probably a good thing...
On the older planes without seatback screens, it always bugs me how they make you pull down your window shade and sit in the dark even if you don't want to sleep or watch the movie, and the movie invariably stinks anyway.
And even on newer planes with individual screens, the move video/audio quality is usually not so good, and even though you have choices, it's still choices between several sucky movies. The screens usually do offer other distractions like games and shopping, but the games tend to be lame and the shopping's pointless.
This doesn't really bother me. I never really watch the movies as I hate that they are usually edited, cropped and hard for me to see on such small screens. My girlfriend loves them though so she'll hate this. I also don't like the free preview over the PA system so I will welcome the peace and quiet.
For every person that complains about having to pay for checking their over-sized bags, lack of snacks, drinks and movies I should hope there's one that worries that if the airlines keep losing money they may fold and cut air travel options to their local airport. I'm one of the latter.
Ordering new planes sans entertainment systems is one of the worst ideas. The cost to install these things at time of purchase has to be less expensive than attempting to retrofitting it to a plane (except for major interior overhauls, but those are usually 5-10 years out).
I'm with loganmo. I fly JetBlue exclusively now. Fortunately I'm just doing FLNYC flights so JetBlue's NYC-centric view of air travel works for me. Unlimited drinks & food ('though alcohol is still $), DirecTV+XM and actual legroom makes the flight enjoyable. Now if JetBlue could just rid themselves of the TSA...
@prag: The solution to this problem is pure & simple -- you can't sell a product at a price you can't make a profit on. The airlines need to raise their damn prices and be done with it. Ideally, the airlines need to raise their prices AND raise their level of service.
Good service breeds loyalty, moreso than those near-useless neutered frequent flyer programs the airlines have now.
@sharkd: OMG, air tubes, I'd forgotten about those!! I just had a serious flashback to my sister and flying PanAm as little kids and blowing into the plug end of the tube headphones while the other was wearing them....
It probably cost more to dump the movie system then to pop in a DVD each flight.