What's the future of entertainment on Air New Zealand aircraft?

Bohemian Rhapsody was a big hit with Air NZ passengers. Photo / Supplied

Air New Zealand provides thousands of hours of entertainment in its planes and while there's a move by some airlines to do away with seat-back screens in favour of personal devices, it has not shown any intention of doing away with them. The airline's general manager of customer experience Nikki Goodman explains what's been top rating over the last year, the challenge of hitting the entertainment sweet spot, why you laugh and cry at the dumbest movies at 37,000 feet and what's coming up over summer.

What's the process for deciding content?

Customers tell us they want choice and an intuitive platform that makes it easy to discover great content and tailor their watchlist for the flight ahead. Air New Zealand has a dedicated in-flight digital experience team and we partner with content provider Global Eagle (a Los Angeles-based company) to curate our in-flight entertainment (IFE).

We fly an increasingly diverse range of customers with an evolving set of needs - so we aim for a broad range of content that offers attractive options for everyone. We feature a range of Hollywood and independent content. You'll see blockbuster movies from Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal Studios alongside indie productions.

Around 20 per cent of our audio and vision is New Zealand-made. Along with providing quality, relevant and engaging choices, we also think about the unique viewing environment on board. Emotions are heightened when travelling and viewing habits differ inflight. Customers want the ability to binge the latest blockbusters, but at different stages of the flight they want shows that encourage relaxation.

Friends is still the second most popular TV show on our IFE as it offers an escape into a familiar world. When curating content we look for a balance of the new and the classics people love. Many customers tell us flying is their "me time". At home most of us share a remote. With individual seatback screens, flying is a window for customers to immerse themselves in a new topic, or a show they wouldn't normally have time to enjoy.

Passengers like tuning into the familiar shows such as Friends. Photo / Supplied

We encourage customers to dig into a topic by curating content which extends a story across different media – as an example, fans of our most watched film on board this year Bohemian Rhapsody can discover more about Freddy Mercury and Queen through documentaries, TV interviews and audio.

Like a TV network, we stay close to preferences and use research to refine our content mix. We capture insights through user testing, surveys and viewing stats – however we're careful to review findings in the context of the on board environment. Our classical music data is a great example of this. Earlier this year numbers showed customers were listening to thousands of hours of classical music. After drilling down, we found that customers were choosing classical music to help them sleep – an insight which resulted in our sleep playlist.

What were the big hits from the past year?

Our most popular title in 2019 was Bohemian Rhapsody which attracted 233,000 unique hits. Our most popular kids title is Paw Patrol. The series had over 200,000 views in 2019 and a single episode had over 45,000 views. For long-running content, Lord of the Rings remains one of our most popular classic titles mainly with inbound customers.

Top New Release Movies (2019)

1. Bohemian Rhapsody

2. A Star is Born

3. Crazy Rich Asians

4. Aquaman

5. Rocketman

6. Avengers End Game

7. Aladdin

8. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum

The final movie in the trilogy (Fellowship of the Ring) averages almost 5000 views every month. Most popular NZ content is They Shall Not Grow Old, with 67,000 views.

Where does the content come from and how does the tech work?

We work with all the major Hollywood studios as well as independent outlets around the world and here in New Zealand. Global Eagle receive all content, encode it and create the metadata (adding in information such as language translation options and genre classification).

It's passed to Panasonic Avionics and then shipped to New Zealand and manually loaded to each aircraft. We have a dedicated budget for New Zealand content and our focus on championing Kiwi voices and stories makes our IFE distinctive to Air New Zealand. Our team has strong links into the local music and movie industry and we work hard to programme a wide range of Kiwi short films, movies, documentary and audio which we showcase on our Kiwi choice channel.

We're also working to share New Zealand's cultural heritage with a new IFE channel, In the Vault, with the National Library this summer. Curated by the National Library, In the Vault will be available inflight from January 1, 2020, and features historic music collections that the library has helped preserve. The playlist presents a journey through New Zealand and Polynesia's diverse musical past, from Māori waiata to retro pop, island ukulele bands to jazz combos, art music to brass bands The selections will be regularly refreshed with a completely new playlist every six month.

A Star is Born also proved popular on Air NZ flights over the past year. Photo / Supplied

How do you achieve a balance between new releases and classics?

It's not hard to source a lot of content. What's harder is hitting the sweet spot of new content with a "night out" factor alongside a quality back catalogue of classics. We refresh our content monthly and generally aim to add around eight new releases and up to 40 titles to our back catalogue.

Choice is the highest driver of customer satisfaction, so it's incredibly important we stay relevant. Customers tell us they want a mix of new content they wouldn't find elsewhere alongside familiar titles and we see this play out in viewing behaviour onboard. Customers often start a long-haul flight with a blockbuster or two. On waking they want something familiar and as they become more alert closer to landing, there's a higher interest in podcasts, TED talks and destination content. Exploring these patterns further will help refine our IFE offering as we move toward more ultra-long-haul flying.

How strong is the move to box sets and content from streaming platforms?

We're seeing the Netflix effect inflight with a huge increase in box set views on board. Chernobyl, for instance, was a massive success this year, with customers bingeing the full box set in one flight or a return journey. Customers want to escape into their own space when flying and box sets, like movies, offer this immersive experience.

With the influx of new streaming platforms, there's no shortage of content for us to programme. The key is staying close to our customers so our choices meet their needs, as well as ensuring our interface makes content discovery easy.

What's most popular – movies or other content?

Movies are still the most popular, followed by box sets, then music but we have also seen growing interest in documentaries and podcasts. Comedy remains our most popular genre across all media types, followed by drama.

Top box sets

1. Big Bang Theory

2. Friends

3. Modern Family

4. Young Sheldon

5. Family Guy

6. Chernobyl

7. Ted Talks

8. Paw Patrol

9. Fleabag

10. Killing Eve

(Keeping up with the Kardashians is #22 after only being onboard from August)

We're noticing a new trend for ultra-short content and recently we launched a series of mini documentaries, some as brief as one minute, which are proving popular. Edu-tainment options, whether it be podcasts, documentaries, Ted talks, are also attracting more hits.

Inflight entertainment screens are staying on Air NZ flights. Photo / Greg Bowker

What don't or can't you show?

We don't often edit content from the original version but we do remind passengers to be mindful of those around them before playing R rated or sensitive shows.We provide a
specific kids' section which contains only G classification content. Caregivers can also set the level of media access for children care via a filter on their seatback screen.

How popular is audio?

Audio is popular and we have won several international awards for our music selection. We feature audio from all three major labels, Sony, Warner and Universal. We've also had great success in the past few years with podcasts.

The most popular playlist onboard is "Sleep Companion", a playlist we designed to help passengers drift off. The BBC's Desert Island Disc series has performed really well this year.

What's the long-term future of IFE, and will you follow the move of some other airlines to personal devices only?

Entertainment is integral to our customer experience and customers tell our unique and curated offering gives a special "night out" feel to their flight. While customers want the ability to use their device, they also want the entertainment factor of new and different content, alongside some delicious drink and food. Our full service IFE is part of our hospitality, our manaakitanga, and we won't be removing our seatback screens.

Passengers will binge on blockbusters like Avengers: Endgame at different stages of flight. Photo / Supplied

How Wi-Fi is changing the equation

Air New Zealand offers free Wi-Fi on connected international aircraft and while we're seeing it change cabin behaviour, Wi-Fi is complementing rather than replacing IFE. As in our living rooms, we've observed increased second screen use with customers checking social media apps while watching TV or movies.

As new cabins are rolled out, will the hardware change much?

Customers tell us IFE is very important to them, so a personal screen will remain key to our offering. What this looks like and how IFE will interface with customers' devices is still under the microscope. We're paying close attention to how we better integrate customers' screens on board, perhaps as a platform for inflight notifications. Bigger and thinner screens, wireless headphone technology, the ability to stream content from a personal device to a back of seat screen – all ideas are on the table.

What are some future trends?

As flights get longer, IFE is hugely important to entertain and care for customers and expect to see even more variety on offer. We're continuing to look at wider entertainment trends, from games to augmented reality such our Magic Leap Partnership, to the rise of short form content and the closer relationship between social media and entertainment. Customers tell us they want to use some of their time onboard to learn and boost wellness, so more edutainment options are likely in the future. This year we've trialled language lessons and we've launched our Les Mills inflight exercise programme.