[Anonymous]

[Capedoctor]

Must preface this by saying that the on demand choices on BA are really excellent.

HOWEVER. Just flew LHR to ATH on BA. Outward bound they showed DIARY OF A WIMPY KID. Yes, a kids film of little or no relevance. Look, this isn’t a flight to Saudi, but to the home of Oedipus Rex, for goodness sake.

Could they do worse on the inbound? Outdid themselves with GNOMEO AND JULIET which caused headphones to be destroyed.

Even the ultra sensitive AA showed ( a language censored) version of THE KINGS SPEECH.

Any reason for this dumbing down of the movie choices? Anyone have a possibly worse choice of films?

[VintageKrug]

It’s actually a rather sensitive choice; UK schools begin breaking up this week and so many families will be off on summer hols to Greece; I would imagine this is the reason for the children’s film being shown on that route.

[Swissdiver]

In it is a short haul flight after all. Lucky you had a movie…

[robsmith100]

Generally i dont have an issue with IFE but hate it when airlines show repeats of old sitcoms, especially British ones. I go abroad to get a away from the UK and dont want to constantly reminded.

[Capedoctor]

The flight was about 4 hours long, so is a bit more medium distance. I think also in the US there are films above 3 hours as far as I remember.

Ended up finishing a tortuous book about androids and sheep.

I do see the point about kids and films but the IFE was a single video machine, not one of the more sophisticated systems nowadays. Minimal kids on the flight and mine hated the selection (11 & 13)

[Eastbourneguy]

If you had to use the BA ATH flights i take it you went on the 767?
You were lucky to get a film that worked on it! – m,y last few trips have either had screens that didnt work, colour films showing in Black & White due to Technical difficulties – and even the wrong film showing than advertised.

But then on a short flight i guess its not top of the list – but when they have constantly awarded Miles in compensation i would rather have the compensation miles than the film!

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

It’s not just the films, the whole CE experience onflights is iffy.

You don’t know what seat to expect, 767 aisle, 767 middle, A320 convertible, A320 non convertible.

As Binman62 says, the whole service needs looking at for four hour sectors.

[RichHI1]

All of which (plus equally lousy domestic US ife) is why I carry my Archos PVR, my laptop and my portable blu ray player. Only problem with BA in Europe is the percentage of scarebuses with powerpoints in Business. I do not fly to Europe much but in the last two years I can only recall one 320 equipment with in seat power.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Rich

I can’t remember how many 320s have power, think it is somewhere between 10-20, but IIRC none of the 319s or 321s do, so on routes where they use all three, the probablility is quite low.

Air Malta don’t have any power in any aircraft, so I invested in a long life battery for my Thinkpad (5-6 hours if you set the power up for batt life) and use that to view films or act as a recharge station for portable devices.

[stevescoots]

I tend to have seen just about every movie there is with so many flights, I pretty much always watch something or listen to a spoken word book off the laptop

[VintageKrug]

I also always take a laptop with me for longer flights, or use an iPod on shorter hops if I don’t need to work.

There are some pretty good movies and TV shows on longhaul this month:

http://www.britishairways.com/travel/ifeoutavodlisting/public/en_gb

..and an especially good range for children; this is a good thing as they are most likely to get bored on a longer flight, and keeping them entertained means a better trip for everyone.

[Swissdiver]

Laptop is always with me and useful for longer SH flights. But I always have loaded on my iPhone a number of TED’s podcasts. Enlightening…

[VintageKrug]

What’s TED?

[RichHI1]

I find it interesting the movies that work best on planes are different to theater or at home.
Obviously spectatculars which benefit from big screen don’t work so well but also I can watch shallow frothy movies and dip in and out, fall asleep and rejoin etc whereas when watching elsewhere if my attention is not grabbed in 10 minutes, I walk. Have a horrible feeling this means I am starting to multitask….

[Author]

Posts