In a recent business trip to Miami connected through Atlanta I experienced the new In-Flight Entertainment Systems (IFEs) available at selected Delta flights. They let you enjoy games and on-demand audio and video contents. All in all it makes your flight shorter, which makes a difference for the more than 10 hours that takes BCN-ATL.

I observed that it was based on Linux, as one of the units in the next seats row happened to reboot now and then showing the typical penguin screen, and seemed to allow some kind of networking too.

Back at home, I’ve done some search and it is build by Panasonic Avionics, based, in fact, on Red Hat Linux. And looks like they have plans to make it grow.

Virgin America has a similar product called RED.

With factors as Pay-per-View and networking, and being this a growing trend, expect some “things” happening in this environment midterm.

Unfortunately, a delay in the flight taking me back to Atlanta due to technical reasons, made me miss the connection and I had to spend one night in Atlanta and got re-routed through New York. Boeing 767 units serving the segment New York to Barcelona are not yet equipped with this system Delta calls “Delta on-demand”, so I wasn’t able to use it again when coming back home.

But I had some sleep, which I thank the hostess that conceded me three consecutive seats in the center row. I suppose I looked tired after five flights in five days, totaling almost 24 hours spend in flight and 18 hours more in airports.

Meetings in Miami were fairly productive and final balance is positive after all.