Joining the ranks of United and Alaska Airlines, American Airlines will no longer install seat-back monitors for in-flight entertainment in its 100 new domestic-bound Boeing 737s, the first four of which will be put into service later this year. Before you despair about movie-less flights (the horror!), the airline's library of movies and television shows, including some live TV, will still be available to passengers who connect to the in-flight internet. You just have to bring your own mobile phone, tablet, or laptop to watch and don't worry, the new planes will have outlets at every seat to make sure you don't run out of juice mid-Walking Dead episode.
“More than 90 percent of our passengers already bring a device or screen with them when they fly,” the airline said in a statement sent to employees on Tuesday. “Those phones and tablets are continually upgraded, they're easy to use and, most importantly, they are the technology our customers have chosen.”
Instead of investing in the monitors, American will put money into upgrading its wi-fi services, swapping Gogo's earlier system for much faster satellite internet from ViaSat and Gogo's new 2Ku. That means streaming from Netflix or Amazon (without downloading the video for offline use) from 30,000 feet will finally be a reality, according to Skift. Everything comes at a price with airlines these days (welcome to the world of Basic Economy), so you'll still have to pay for Internet to stream shows or answer emails. But according to Skift, some, if not all, of the library of shows and movies American is offering will be available for free once you're connected.
The hidden bonus? Seat-back monitors come with in-flight entertainment boxes, those pesky, bulky, leg-room stealing systems that actually hold all of the video information. On American, which doesn't mark the location of the boxes on seating charts, they take up at least 20 percent of coveted under-seat space for aisle passengers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Now that the airline is getting rid of the monitors, passengers will finally get their stretching space back. We'll take what airplane wins we can get, these days, and more legroom is definitely one of them.