For a decade, airlines took the screen out of the seat in front of you. The reasoning was that everyone brings their own — a phone, a tablet — so the weight, the wiring and the cost could go. American Airlines made that the standard across its narrowbody fleet. On 18 August it announced it is undoing it: a seatback screen at every seat, in 4K, with USB-C, Bluetooth pairing and Starlink wi-fi.
New Airbus and Boeing aircraft arrive with the screens from 2028, and existing aircraft are retrofitted. At the same time the share of premium and extra-legroom seats on short-haul departures rises from about 25 per cent to about 40. The device passengers already carried turned out not to replace the one that comes with the seat.
So…:
What have you asked customers to bring that they would rather you provided?
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