American Airlines to Provide Samsung Tablets to customers | Hacker News Reader

American Airlines to Provide Samsung Tablets to customers

tekgoblin.com

7 pointsmjurek6 comments

Neat, but seems a bit behind the times in a sense. There's nothing 'first class' about a tablet - an ipad is $500 - less than the cost of many flights. Anyone who wants one and flies can already get one, and probably have a better experience with it.

What would make far more sense is to offer wifi on the planes, and offer in-flight purchases of content (movies/magazines) for android and possibly iphone/ipad. html5 or epub books for $1 while you're trapped in flight? I'd do it.

They could then be making marginally more money from all the passengers.

Neat, but seems a bit behind the times in a sense. There's nothing 'first class' about a tablet - an ipad is $500 - less than the cost of many flights

Sure, it's only valuable if it's loaded with good content. Stick a decent movie/TV show collection, some good games and some e-books on it, and it's both better and probably a lot cheaper than one of the fancy seatback TV systems, even once you account for breakage.

Eek, no thanks, customers hate being nickel-and-dimed. (Which probably means United will do it, because they love nickel-and-diming.) Still, especially if you're in First Class you definitely shouldn't have to pay for entertainment.

Budget carrier Jetstar in Australia is doing it with iPads: http://www.intomobile.com/2011/02/16/jetstar-ipad-rental-ser... -- oddly they were supposed to start in April this year but I can't find a review of what the service is actually like.

I hate being nickel and dimed too. I don't consider paying $1 for an ebook that I'd download to my own device to keep nickel and dimed. What I do hate is paying $4 for a bottle of water, $3 for a 2oz bag of cookies, $10 for a 'lunch' box that would make my middle school lunch lady cry.

I'd PPV a movie on almost every flight, but I have no interest in a public tablet. Yuck.

Using tablets means that the equipment is easier to upgrade/replace. With integrated systems like VirginAmerica's Red, the whole plane would have to be re-outfited.

Do you really want another store to buy stuff? These tablets will have a way to purchase wifi access. I think that is the easiest way to make money because downloading things opens up all types of questions like "I started the download when we were at 14K feet (wifi cuts off at 10K), can I have my money back?" or "The download failed and it wants to charge me again"

Flight attendants shouldn't be tech support nor is it their job.

I'd rather stare at the back of my eyelids, thanks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com