Author: Leticia Pintoni

Inflight Dublin, a leading Inflight Entertainment (IFE) provider, has been awarded the contract to provide the latest IFE content to TUI, the world’s leading tourism group. TUI owns five European airlines and is the ninth largest airline operator in Europe. The TUI airlines fly more than 27 million guests per year to more than 150 destinations worldwide departing from more than 60 airports in eleven European countries. The collaboration with TUI aims to further improve the airline’s passenger experience through innovative content. The new relationship supports TUI’s dedication to elevating passenger experience to new heights.

© 2019 Warner Bros. Ent. All rights reserved.

Inflight Dublin covers licensing, programming and delivery of inflight content for the TUI airlines in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Nordics. Content includes blockbuster movies, television programmes, eclectic audio selections, and broadcasts in 8 languages (English, German, French, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish). The new IFE content is available across the fleet of TUI’s Boeing 787 and 767 (in-seat IFE) and the Boeing 737NG (overhead IFE).

© 2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

Get in touch with us today to find out how Inflight Dublin can help you transform your airlines in-flight entertainment experience by providing the broadest selection of content, a range of design and digital services, and the Everhub wireless IFE solution.

Inflight Dublin, a global provider of IFE content and wireless solutions, has been appointed by SriLankan Airlines to provide inflight entertainment services for the next three years.

SriLankan Airlines is the national airline of Sri Lanka and an award-winning carrier that flies to over 111 destinations across 48 countries. The airline is focused on providing passengers with a reliable, safe, and pleasant travel experience.

SriLankan’s reputation for a first-class service will be enhanced through the collaboration with Inflight Dublin and the provision of a substantial collection of Hollywood new release titles, choice classics, international movies, popular television shows and a diverse selection of audio content.

© 2019 Paramount Pictures. All Rights reserved.

The partnership between Inflight Dublin and SriLankan Airlines will deliver a huge boost to the passenger experience through the provision and extensive promotion of inflight entertainment that is of the highest quality and most up-to-date.

Global provider of inflight entertainment and wireless solutions Inflight Dublin has been awarded Icelandair’s contract for inflight entertainment.

The partnership with Inflight Dublin will significantly improve Icelandair’s passenger experience through an extensive catalogue of fresh content that aligns with the airline’s desire to provide the best entertainment for its customers.  Content will include an inventory of recent Oscar-winning films as well as a large selection of family-favourite classics, along with the choice to view numerous popular comedy and drama television boxsets. The passenger offering will also include a collection of locally produced movies, television shows, audio albums, and audiobooks in native Icelandic.

© 2019 Warner Bros. Ent. All rights reserved.

Operating to over 45 gateways across Europe, the United States, and Canada, Icelandair has over 80 years of experience in making the passenger journey as memorable as the awe-inspiring landscape of Iceland itself.

Icelandair operates frequent flights to Dublin from over 25 airports across Europe, Canada and the U.S. To learn more: https://www.icelandair.com/en-gb/flights/dublin/ 

ARVR Innovate is an annual conference and expo which gives those in Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) industries a platform to showcase the capabilities of these emerging technologies and the benefits they pose for businesses that want to gain a competitive edge in terms of productivity and/or customer engagement. 

The event is held in Dublin each year and is attended by an extensive variety of professionals ranging from investors and developers to entrepreneurs and innovators, all with a keen interest in the growing industry. 

Inflight Dublin has been branching out into the AR sector by developing an innovative AR platform which can provide enhanced auxiliary revenue options on board, alongside our routine high quality and up to date content. We have worked closely with Dr. Brian Vaughan, Senior Lecturer in Creative Digital Media at the Technology University Dublin (TUD), and his team to fully create and implement the software to be incorporated and offered to airlines within our Everhub wireless IFE platform.

The demo involved the user being able to overlay a commodity typically sold on board a commercial flight, such as a watch, in order to aid them in their purchasing decisions. This experience involves hovering a mobile or tablet device over the SMART icons to gain access to a range of services directly with their devices. Other elements of the on-board AR platform include Entertainment, Duty-free shopping, Digital magazines, Food and Beverages, and Destination services.

A key benefit of incorporating AR into the IFE system is the reduction in weight for aircrafts which in turn leads to a reduction in fuel costs. For example, United Airlines saved nearly $300,000 a year by reducing the weight of each copy of their magazine by 0.03kg (CBS News, 2018). Alongside cost-savings is the continual benefits of keeping up with trends in the industry in order to provide the greatest experience for passengers possible.

Source: ‘Airlines cut operating costs by helping planes lose weight’ – CBS News, 2018 

The Inflight Dublin team were delighted to welcome Dr. Joe Leader, CEO of APEX (Airline Passenger Experience Association) , to our head office in Dublin on May 3rd to discuss the future advancements in the aviation industry with our very own CEO John White. 

The Airline Passenger Experience Association is a network of the world’s leading airlines, suppliers and related companies committed to elevating the level of the airline passenger experience. The association offers members a wide range of opportunities to excel in the airline passenger experience industry by keeping them current with the latest industry news, trends and developments and by helping them develop relationships with clients and colleagues from around the world.

Joe Leader has been a leading executive for more than two decades across technology and aviation companies. He also holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Emory University, MBA in technology management, and conducted his business Ph.D. research on accelerating technology adoption in aviation.

Inflight Dublin is proud to be a member of APEX and to have such a close relationship with its CEO, Joe Leader.

Regardless of potentially polarizing reactions, some of the greatest movies of all time have been based on or drawn influence from books – The Shawshank Redemption, The Lord of the Rings, Apocalypse Now, and The Shining to name a few. A who’s who of iconic filmmakers have rolled the dice and successfully adapted these winding narratives into condensed and satisfying cinematic experiences, often taking risky creative liberties to make the most impactful films possible.

This month on the IFD Podcast, two of our in-house bookworms, Aoife and Eimear, take a look at a few of their favourite book-to-movie adaptations, exploring the history of the titles and drawing comparisons between the different mediums.

Artwork © 1999 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. 

First up on Aoife’s list is David Fincher’s 1999 classic, Fight Club. Based on the novel of the same name, written by Chuck Palahniuk and released just 3 years prior to its visual counterpart, Fight Club has been labelled as a “coming of age film” by Fincher. The movie amassed a loyal cult following in the years after its release, featuring strong performances from Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, and Edward Norton, along with one of the most memorable endings in recent memory. Aoife explains that while it took heavy influence from the source material, the movie arguably rescued the book from eventually fading into obscurity.

Aoife’s second choice was Spike Jonze’s adaptation of the iconic 1963 children’s picture book, Where The Wild Things Are. An unconventional movie with an atmosphere that can be difficult to define, it perfectly reflects the surreal nature of Maurice Sendak’s original illustrations while simultaneously managing to feel like its own entirely unique experience. Aoife discusses the challenges facing a director when handling such a treasured work.

Eimear decided to hone in on some classics from the high school teen movies of the 90s, taking 1995’s Clueless as her first point of discussion. Loosely based on Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma, Eimear discusses how the film reappropriates the setting, characters, and themes to resonate with a modern audience, but maintains strong parallels to the novel with regard to its narrative structure, and how Amy Heckerling’s clever reimagining of the material ushered in an entirely new sub-genre of classic texts framed through a contemporary lens.

TM & Copyright © 2019 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

Next up on Eimear’s list was Gil Junger’s 1999 rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You. A loose modernization of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, the film abides by Eimear’s case for the 90s-era obsession with recontextualizing older writings to create compelling modern stories. It acted as a springboard to success for a number of young actors, providing breakthrough roles for Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Heath Ledger.

Are you a book-purist that believes treasured material should be left untouched? Or do you welcome films based on your favourite books with open arms? We’d love to know what you consider to be some of the best adaptations we’ve seen to date, or what books you’d like to see on the big screen in the future!

Inflight Dublin currently works with over 50 African distributors providing specialised content for some of the largest airlines within the region including Ethiopian Airlines, Egypt Air, Royal Air Moroc, and Kenya Airways.

Clark and Hampton, Closer Pictures, FilmOne Distributors, iROKO, Gravel Road, Rififi Pictures, Rushlake Media, Sahel Sounds, and SaniFilms are just some of the African film distributors we work in partnership with. When it comes to TV distributors, Inflight Dublin works with the largest distributors of African TV content such as Africa XP, Buni TC, Africa 24 Media, Cote Quest, The Africa Channel, Vox Africa, and Wananchi.

We also offer the widest variety of African dialects including Afrikaans, Arabic, Hausa, Oromo, Swahili, Shona, and Zula, to name but a few and of course including English, French, and Portuguese. 

Our team are industry experts in editing, encoding, and multilingual subtitling, which is complemented by long-standing partnerships with all major hardware providers. This ensures that whichever IFE system your fleet is operating on, screening content provided by Inflight Dublin will be a seamless process. Our in-house content specialists are also accustomed to cultural sensitivities which allow airlines to tailor content and featured footage adhering to their passenger demographics.

At Inflight Dublin, our African content is not limited to just Movies or TV. With a comprehensive library of over 10,000 musical tracks from some of the biggest artists across the African music scene allowing your clients to listen to their favourite music whilst cruising to their next destination.

Inflight Dublin’s strong relationships with all major distributors across the continent allows us to deliver unrivalled African content to our clients at cost effective rates which in turn allows our clients to enhance their passengers’ experience on board via economical means.

If you’re interested in finding out more about our CSP services, or indeed any of our other IFE services, get in touch with us now and discover how we can help you transform your passengers’ experience on board.

Inflight Dublin was delighted to sponsor Apex MultiMedia Market’s Networking Event which took place on the evening of Tuesday 16th April between 19:30 – 22:30 at the Ely Wine Cellar in the IFSC.

The Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) is the only non-profit membership trade organization comprised of the world’s leading airlines, industry suppliers, major media groups and related aviation industry leaders dedicated to elevating the passenger experience for more than 80% of global passengers while driving industry initiatives and desired regulation.

The association offers members a wide range of opportunities to excel in the airline passenger experience industry by keeping them current with the latest industry news, trends and developments and by helping them develop relationships with clients and colleagues from around the world. 

APEX MultiMedia Market’s Networking event is a chance for airlines and service providers to meet with distributors offering a range of new and acclaimed TV, movie, games, app and audio content options. It is an invaluable experience to discuss current IFE content trends with top distributors from across the globe.

In addition to attending the APEX Multimedia Market, Inflight Dublin annually exhibits at the APEX Expo, which this year is taking place in Los Angeles from the 9-12 September. Our team of IFE specialists will be on site at the Inflight Dublin Booth 1307 to meet with both our existing airline partners and prospective airlines, showcasing first hand our full range of IFE products and services.

If you wish to schedule a meeting with one of the team attending the Expo, contact us via email on: mail@inflightdublin.com 

“One that really stood out to me, which I would have seen when I was about 15, was Breakfast on Pluto.”

Eimear chose the comedy-drama Breakfast on Pluto as her favourite, which came out in 2005 and is based on the novel by the same name by Patrick McCabe, of Butcher Boy fame.

“It’s directed by Neil Jordan who also did The Butcher Boy and The Crying Game. Very well respected Irish director.”

Starring Cillian Murphy as the lead, a transgender woman who was abandoned at birth and grows up in a small town in rural Ireland in the 1940’s.

“They get the essence of Patrick ‘Kitten’ Braden, who’s the main character, played by Cillian Murphy in the film.”

Cillian Murphy is famed for many roles, notably as the Scarecrow in The Dark Knight trilogy, but he also played lead roles in other famous Irish films, such as Intermission and The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

“Basically it’s split into about 36 chapters. So it’s a kind of, picaresque film, where it’s just following Patrick Kitten Braden through his life.”

From her upbringing in an uncaring foster home, to running away from home with a glam rock band and getting involved with the IRA, it’s a tumultuous existence Kitty lives, and yet she does it with complete poise.

“It’s sort of Dickensian in the way that his spirit triumphs throughout.”

Featuring a whole host of stars, some of rest of the cast include Liam Neeson, Ruth Negga, Liam Cunningham and Stephen Rea.

“I’d say the best cameo in it has to be Brendan Gleeson as a Womble.”

An award winning film, Breakfast on Pluto secured four Irish Film and Television Awards and earned Cillian Murphy a Golden Globe for Best Actor.

“I’m glad I re-watched it! And the costuming is incredible.”

Aoife, who if you’ve been listening you know loves all things horror, chose the recently released The Hole in the Ground. Released at the start of March of this year, The Hole in the Ground is a horror thriller that had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

“It’s starring Seána Kerslake who was also in A Date for Mad Mary which I also absolutely loved. It was just such a fun movie, but this is a very different vibe.”

Seána Kerslake (pronounced Shaw-nah) is also well known for being one of the leading roles in the Irish television show, Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope. She is definitely a star on the rise in the film industry.

“It’s an interesting film because, you know we get a lot of these horror movies where these mothers are stuck in their houses and they become afraid of their children.”

A mother flees a possibly abusive relationship with her young son to the Irish countryside and settles down in a house next to a forest, where a large sinkhole sits in the centre.

“What would you do if you found out your child was becoming someone you didn’t like?”

The film draw on themes of doppelgängers and changelings, with changelings being heavily featured in Irish folklore as a cruel trick played by faeries, and doppelgängers originating from Germany and representing extreme bad luck.

“I think that Irish horror in general is having a little bit of a moment.”

Some of the more popular Irish horror films that have come out in the last decade and that we highly recommend are The Hallow, The Lodgers and The Canal. If you’re a horror fan they are definitely worth a watch!

“I wanted to talk very briefly about Without Name. This is the eco-horror.”

Directed by Lorcan Finnegan and starring Alan McKenna, this film centres on a mysterious forest and a man with something to hide.

“Extra Ordinary is coming out as well which is sort of like a, comedy horror it looks like? With Maeve Higgins in it, I think she plays a driving instructor who can converse with the dead.”

Extra Ordinary had its world premiere in March at the SXSW Film Festival in the United States. Official release date is still to be announced but it is making waves in the festival circuit.

“I feel like the Irish have a good sense of a Gothic tale.”

As the birth place of Bram Stoker, Halloween and banshees, it’s safe to say the Irish know how to tell a good horror story.

That’s not to say they can’t tell an uplifting one from time to time either! Have a listen and leave a comment, do you have a favourite Irish film? Let us know!

Samantha Lyons | Inflight Dublin

Our team of IFE specialists were once again delighted to attend the AIX Expo 2019 in Hamburg alongside the top airlines, CSP’s and tech companies in the airline industry. The AIX Expo is the world’s leading event for airlines and the supply chain to source the latest interior technologies and products. 

Several members of our team were on site to discuss the specialised needs of airlines in terms of their IFE content offering and wireless solutions. Our stand enabled attendees to sample our state-of-the-art hardware and software solutions first-hand. 

The demonstration of our Augmented Reality software generated great intrigue with airline representatives. Users could witness our innovative new concept designed to enhance IFE and inflight services such as Food and Drink menus and Duty-free shopping.  The software platform also provides airlines with a weight-saving initiative, offering the opportunity to reduce the need for paper based menus and brochures.

In addition to this, the first-generation demo of Inflight Dublin’s Everhub™  portable wireless server was on display, showcasing our innovative new hardware option for airlines. The server has the ability to opperate off battery power or aircraft power, and delivers secure high definition browser-based DRM content. This reinforces our stance as being the only true end-to-end wireless solution for airlines – providing Hardware, Software and Content all under one roof.

Our development team are continuously updating and improving the server to reduce size and weight, with the final product due to launch in the coming months. 

In addition to attending the AIX Expo, Inflight Dublin annually exhibits at the APEX Expo, which this year is taking place in Los Angeles from the 9-12 September. Our team of IFE specialists will be on site at the Inflight Dublin Booth 1307 to meet with both our existing airline partners and prospective airlines, showcasing first hand our full range of IFE products and services.

If you wish to schedule a meeting with one of the team attending the Expo, contact us via email on: mail@inflightdublin.com