In-flight TVs: Could the end be near?

Airlines like Delta and United could be grounding you from television or, rather, they’ll let you watch TV if you pay a fee and think about what you’ve done.

A recent article from Yahoo! Travel reports that the luxury of your own personal seat-back monitor may soon be phased out with the rise of personal device alternatives. A new program from Delta lets passengers stream in-flight entertainment on their own devices—for a fee. Meanwhile, United supplies the devices on some flights by renting out tablets to passengers who wish to stream from the airline’s collection of movies and TV shows. Seinfeld re-runs anyone?

“It’s an open secret that airlines never liked seat-back screens,” according to Yahoo! Travel. They’re reportedly expensive to install, to the tune of $3 million per plane, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. Not to mention, expensive to maintain. “Because the bulky devices add a considerable amount to a plane’s weight (an additional 7 percent, according to one airline), a couple hundred of them can singlehandedly eat up an additional $90,000 worth of fuel each year,” says Yahoo! Travel.

Delta, United, JetBlue and Virgin all say that despite offering additional streaming options for personal devices, they’re still very much in the seat-back systems game; Delta even says it’ll be adding more seat-back monitors to 150 of its planes through 2016.

So the big question for airline passengers is, with in-flight TV being phased out, will you pay for streaming via Wi-Fi on your own personal devices, or use the seat-back systems if they stay? And if you forget to bring your own tablets on board, would you rent one of theirs?

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