In-flight entertainment

In-flight entertainment (IFE) refers to the entertainment available to aircraft passengers during a flight. In 1936, the airship Hindenburg offered passengers a piano, lounge, dining room, smoking room, and bar during the -day flight between Europe and America. After World War II, IFE was delivered in the form of food and drink services, along with an occasional projector movie during lengthy flights. In 1985 the first personal audio player was offered to passengers, along with noise cancelling headphones in 1989. During the 1990s, the demand for better IFE was a major factor in the design of aircraft cabins. Before then, the most a passenger could expect was a movie projected on a screen at the front of a cabin, which could be heard via a headphone socket at their seat. Now, in most aircraft, private IFE TV screens are offered. Design issues for IFE include system safety, cost efficiency, software reliability, hardware maintenance, and user compatibility. The in-flight entertainment on board airlines is frequently managed by content service providers. The first in-flight movie was in 1921 on Aeromarine Airways, showing a film called Howdy Chicago to its passengers as the amphibious airplane flew around Chicago. The film The Lost World was shown to passengers of an Imperial Airways flight in April 1925 between London (Croydon Airport) and Paris. Eleven years later, in 1932, the first in-flight television called 'media event' was shown on a Western Air Express Fokker F.10 aircraft. The post-WWII British Bristol Brabazon airliner was initially specified with a 37-seat cinema within its huge fuselage; this was later reduced to a 23-seat cinema sharing the rear of the aircraft with a lounge and cocktail bar. The aircraft never entered service. However, it was not until the 1960s that in-flight entertainment (other than reading, sitting in a lounge and talking, or looking out the window) was becoming mainstream and popular. In 1961, David Flexer of Inflight Motion Pictures developed the 16mm film system using a 25-inch reel for a wide variety of commercial aircraft.