Challenge

Air Mauritius is the flag carrier airline of Mauritius and it’s the fourth largest carrier in Africa.  With flights to and from Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa, Air Mauritius now serves 24 regional and international destinations.

Air Mauritius is committed to deliver the “7 step plan”, set back in 2012. One of the key steps is improving overall service quality and the passenger experience that would be recognised by the industry. In order to do that, a requirement for the “IFE system with a difference” was made. This new IFE offering would provide the following:

• Unique selection of eclectic content, including the latest blockbusters  & international movies, TV shows , audio collections in adherence to their budget for the whole fleet of 10 aircraft
• Range of Exclusive Content that would follow an individual content strategy suggested by the CSP provider
• Improved GUI design for the passengers that is intuitive and user-friendly    

Based on the above criteria and a promise of a 4-star Skytrax status within a year, Inflight Dublin was selected in 2013 as the new CSP.

Solution

How did we help Air Mauritius to achieve 4 star status?

Inflight Dublin was awarded the CSP contract in April 2013. The contract commenced from July 2013 and has been successfully deployed for the past 4 years. At the beginning of the process, we have benchmarked Air Mauritius competitors’ IFE offering and provided an overall content strategy.

At the time, Air Mauritius had 3 IFE systems: Pac 3Ki VOD, Hi8 Analogue and ASL XPI DMR, which replaced VHS tapes. As an experienced CSP provider, we’ve delivered on all these systems without any delays, complying with all the deadlines provided by integrators.

Our dedicated account manager implemented an innovative content strategy that included the development of Air Mauritius Movie offerings – increased number of Hollywood Blockbusters and Classic films available on board, as well as the addition of a new International TV programming including French and Chinese comedy.

Inflight Dublin’s proposed solution for the XP1 route configuration allowed for programming to be based on specific routes and languages, providing the same offering as VOD system. The solution was very well received by the airline and further personalised the content delivery onboard.

By switching to a more powerful format, content quality has substantially increased.    

Further IFE highlights that cemented the Air Mauritius 4 star status include expansion of the AOD library, an introduction of the XP1 system (50% increased content on Classic aircraft) and delivery of the anticipated Web GUI.    

How did Air Mauritius content evolve over the years?

Air Mauritius content was significantly increased after the first cycle and continued in this trend for the past 4 years. Inflight Dublin currently provides the following content for Air Mauritius:

•  Blockbuster movies (Hollywood)
• International Titles
• French & Chinese TV
• TV comedy & Drama boxsets
• Kids bundle of movies and TV
• Podcasts and destination videos
• Exclusive content such as Fairdeal Bollywood movies

Outcome

Inflight Dublin has delivered on the promise to Air Mauritius to improve their Skytrax ratings to 4 stars within a year. It was a joint effort of the leading CSP provider, and Air Mauritius who put their trust in our capable hands and let us transform the inflight passenger experience.

The Brief

With a tight deadline of just one month, RwandAir asked us to develop a safety video for the delivery of their new Airbus A330.

The Project

The challenge was to form a concept that could be designed and animated within the short timeframe, while keeping the style in-line with RwandAir’s brand and tone of voice. We went through an extensive, concept development phase, exploring multiple avenues before arriving at the idea to base the video around an animated safety card. With this idea in mind, we fixed our design on clear illustrations, like those found in safety cards.

In tandem with this, we constructed a script that would cover and meet the necessary safety information and requirements of the various aviation safety authorities.

Concept Development & Storyboarding

The challenge was to come up with a concept and aesthetic that could be designed and animated within the short timeframe, while keeping the style in line with RwandAir’s brand and tone of voice.
We went through an extensive concept development phase, exploring multiple avenues before arriving at the idea to base the video around an animated safety card. This concept helped define our design exploration to clean illustrations similar to those found in safety cards.
In tandem with this, we developed a script that would cover the necessary safety information and meet the requirements of the various aviation safety authorities.

Production

As the production timeline was very tight, our designers worked with the animation team, immediately passing-off finished assets to be animated. In this manner, it enabled us to hit our deadline, even with some time to spare.

The Brief

Norwegian Air Shuttle approached us looking for a suite of new bumper videos, bumpers are short five – ten second videos that play before a TV show or movie.

The Project

Norwegian Airlines has a distinct brand and company ethos that we needed to follow. This was challenging because we had to stick closely to their imagery style.

We pitched several ideas to them and their favourite was a mixture of vector-illustration and footage.

The Brief

Frequent Flyers Destinations is a premium lifestyle magazine for business and leisure travellers. Available in airports, it has an editorial focus on air travel and frequent flyer topics such as destinations, culture and travel. The magazine’s primary aim is to enhance a frequent passengers’ airport experience.

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The Project

In November 2016, Inflight Dublin was approached by Airguide to redesign their existing publication, with a marked emphasis on look and feel, further enhanced by a direct focus on quality travel-based editorial.

Inflight Dublin completely overhauled the design and layout of the entire magazine in a bid to create a modern, engaging user experience, while showcasing the editorial content. Our main focus was on typography and a sympathetic use of space within the layouts. We also enhanced the editorial flow of the publication through a more coherent pagination structure. This was further improved by a careful use of imagery that complimented the design.

Lastly, we helped Airguide to engage with advertisers by designing a comprehensive media-kit. This included creating a range of subscription and in-house advertisements for the magazine, which brought Frequent Flyers Destinations in-line with competing lifestyle magazines.

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Challenge:

What was the requirement identified by Sky Prime? Sky Prime is a well-established private aviation service provider (headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) serving many high profile clients and VVIP in the Middle East region and worldwide. Sky Prime provides top of the range private flight service and the current fleet consists of luxurious Airbus fleet (A319, A340, A320, A330, A340-200), Gulfstream private jets, spacious Phenom and Legacy Embraer aircraft. As a high-end aviation services provider, Sky Prime basic services offering includes inflight connectivity (in high demand currently), telephones, TV, games, and DVD. Airline wished to add to their sophisticated service for their valued passengers by giving them a bespoke experience in providing them with personal pre-loaded devices with high-quality entertainment. Sky Prime didn’t have any prior IFE onboard. This requirement represents Sky Prime’s commitment to a luxurious, seamless passenger experience, where relax and top notch inflight service play a pivotal role. This new IFE system will have the following:

1. Unique selection of eclectic content, including the latest Hollywood and Arabic Movies, TV shows, international audio albums and games on their whole fleet
2. Range of personalised local content that would follow an individual content strategy
3. All content will be provided on pre-loaded iPads, that will be distributed to the passengers as they are boarding the aircraft

Priding on our reactive approach and quick turnaround times, Sky Prime’s requirement for a complex IFE solution that could be deployed and operational in a very limited timeframe didn’t cause any problems.

Solution

Implementation of Sky Prime pre-loaded IFE solution   As part of their in-flight service, Sky Prime sought to complement their internet connectivity service with an Inflight Entertainment offering. Inflight Dublin has agreed to exclusively supply Inflight Entertainment products to be used on the passenger entertainment systems onboard Sky Prime’s aircraft. The client required high quality hardware that could be managed by Sky Prime staff on the ground and handed out to passengers in-flight. Inflight Dublin developed a high-end hardware, software, media and support service for Sky Prime. Leveraging the latest iPad pro’s, we developed a secure, Hollywood approved, mobile application. This application was expertly aligned with Sky Prime’s brand guidelines and was configured with the latest Movies, TV Shows, Music, and Games. One of the interesting differentiators was also an age restriction feature within the application to ensure children could not access certain content. Inflight Dublin also sourced the latest sync & charge carts to allow Sky Prime to easily manage and update the iPads in Riyadh.

Outcome

We’ve managed to turn this project around within 2 months, with the provision of more than 400 iPads for the whole fleet, installations, and content upload. Sky Prime now have a robust IFE offering, with expert ground support, that showcases their brand and emphasises their high-quality service to passengers. Moreover, this IFE solution provides the balanced inflight experience Sky Prime were seeking. Passengers now have access to the latest available entertainment via the iPads, whilst also having internet access for key communication activities, such as email and social media.

Challenge

What was the requirement identified by PrivatAir? PrivatAir is a Geneva-based business jet operator who delivers the highest quality inflight service to its customers. PrivatAir has been in operation for over 40 years, employs 400 people and has operating bases in Frankfurt (Germany), Geneva (Switzerland) and Copenhagen (Denmark). A key part of its service is the Inflight Entertainment offering. PrivatAir had a pre-loaded iPad solution that offered passengers movies, TV shows, music, games and digital publications. There were several logistics and operational problems with this solution. Airline crew had to manually update each single iPad with new content. Updates were happening all around the world (system breaking down), adding hours to their already busy schedule, which resulted in a real culprit for crew efficiency. Airline wished to offer a more dynamic, flexible IFE product that reduced cost and improved crew logistics and was looking at new ways on how to do this.

Solution

Privatair Everhub deployment   Inflight Dublin evaluated the operation and proposed our Wireless Everhub solution that would not only ensure costs savings, but would also mitigate the previous logistic issues that crew were experiencing by eliminating the manual updating of the iPads. After the initial presentation with PrivatAir / Hapag Lloyd team, they were very impressed and happy to proceed with the wireless solution. PrivatAir was included from a design point of view and collaboratively we fine-tuned the brand design. We then had a workshop with the crew and team in which we discussed their pain points and reviewed the current setup. In light of this, we demonstrated how the new set up would work and how more efficient it would be. Inflight Dublin suggested a portable wireless IFE server to be utilised as a streaming service. This meant that only the server needed to be updated, rather than having to update all iPads manually. The server streams video and audio files to the iPads and enables passengers to download their preferred publications. The experience for the passenger was identical to the pre-loaded iPad scenario, however, with an added benefit… they could also use their own mobile devices to stream media and download publications. For the crew, Inflight Dublin provided a dedicated mobile application. This “crew app” allowed a crew member to download the daily publication package before they boarded the aircraft, and with a push of a button, push the new package to the wireless IFE server.  

Outcome

From the content point of view, we provide PrivatAir with 10 movies, 10 TV Shows, 50 Albums, Publications and airline material per cycle.

This solution improved the passenger experience, by allowing PrivatAir to download the digital publications to their own devices. It also saved over 5 hours of work, per day, for PrivatAir’s crew, by providing a quick and easy way for them to update the digital publications. Senior Vice-President of Business Aviation at the airline, Pedro Caneira, reiterated that “Inflight Dublin developed a bespoke wireless IFE system, with crew management App…delivered in a highly efficient and professional manner. ”

The Brief

Everhub™ is a wireless inflight entertainment and revenue-generating software solution. Our aim was to develop and design a new brand, user interface, and communication channel for our own wireless IFE product. The challenge was to reflect, through the brand language, the wide range of passenger services available in one innovative application and a key feature of this was to communicate to the airlines the potential for revenue generation, through the end user features.

Brand Identity & Language

‘A hub of activity which is always on, ready to entertain, inform and impress’ was our guiding principle when developing Everhub’s brand identity. We combined the ideas of wireless, connectivity and centralised activity into a modern logo mark and typeface. We extended this sense of innovation and product complexity into Everhub’s brand language, using a bold gradient colour pallet and a connected-points background texture. Four tailor-made linear icons were designed, each highlighting the essential features of the Everhub™ application and with our brand toolkit in place, we rolled it out across the communication channels.

UX/UI

We incorporated the new branding into Everhub’s UI using colour, type and a linear style of iconography. Users can easily navigate through the range of services by accessing four menus: Discover, Entertainment, Inflight and Destination services.

Brand Communications

As part of the Everhub™ product launch, our design team created the following marketing channels and materials:

• Website
• Motion Graphics
• Brochure
• Print and digital advertisements

Each piece of communication adapted parts of the brand, by focusing on the four key elements: Discover, Entertainment, Inflight and Destination services. Which delivered a clear, simple, consistent and affective message.

The Brief 

We were invited to re-design the eight-page inflight section of RwandAir’s 124 page on-board magazine: “Inzozi”, available on each aircraft in their fleet.

The Project

Our challenge was to design eight pages of inflight content that matched the current brand guidelines of “Inzozi”. While showcasing the range of on board entertainment, from the latest Hollywood blockbusters to the most anticipated TV shows.

The design scheme was restricted by the requirement of space for two languages; English and French as well as several key pieces of information: language availability, rating, synopsis and which planes this content is available on.

We wished to create a layout that knitted seamlessly with Inzozi’s design ethos and one which allowed the reader to clearly navigate through the Movie, TV, Audio and Game content with ease, by placing emphasis on the latest releases with the use of highlight pages and boxes.