When traveling by air, there are lots of things that can contribute to a great travel experience. One of those things is inflight entertainment, since it’s otherwise easy to get bored when flying. In this post, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the airlines that offer the best inflight entertainment, as admittedly this is an area where many airlines have made huge progress in recent times.
What makes for good inflight entertainment
Airlines have come a long way on the inflight entertainment and connectivity front. When it comes to good inflight entertainment, I’d like to think that it’s important to consider seat back and streaming entertainment, as well as inflight Wi-Fi connectivity.
What makes good for seat back or streaming entertainment?
- There’s the general availability of seat back entertainment; on what percentage of the fleet does the airline offer seat back entertainment?
- What’s the quality of entertainment like? How many movies and shows are there, how easy is the system to use, are the monitors high definition, and are there any other cool features, like bluetooth audio?
- Is there streaming entertainment? I tend to think this is less important if you have seat back entertainment, and that it’s more important if an airline lacks that
What makes for good inflight Wi-Fi?
- Obviously it’s nice to have high-speed Wi-Fi that’s actually usable for things like surfing the web and streaming
- However, there’s also something to be said for an airline offering free Wi-Fi and/or messaging; after all, that’s going to have the widest appeal, so it’s not just for those who are looking to work
- I think it’s important to acknowledge that a large number of airlines have announced plans to introduce free Starlink Wi-Fi, though the actual rollout of that is still very much a work in progress, and I want to give airlines credit based on the experience they’re offering now, and not based on what they’re promising in the future
The airlines with the best inflight entertainment
With the above out of the way, I figured I’d share what I consider to be the world’s best airlines for inflight entertainment. Essentially when you factor in both seat back entertainment and Wi-Fi, which airlines have the overall best offerings for a majority of their passengers.
I’m not going to rank these airlines, because I think which is best depends on what you value most. Instead I’ll share why I consider each of these airlines to be among the best for inflight connectivity. Let me also say that I suspect my last will look very different two years down the road, when many airlines will have rolled out Starlink Wi-Fi on a widespread basis.
With that out of the way, here are my top picks, in no particular order…
Emirates Airline
Emirates has seat back entertainment on every single plane in its fleet, featuring the ICE inflight entertainment system (which stands for Information, Communication, Entertainment). In my opinion, ICE is hands down the best inflight entertainment system in the sky, in terms of ease of use, quality of programming, and variety.
Emirates offers 6,500 different programs, with everything from the latest movies, to complete seasons of TV shows, to live TV, to podcasts, to a tail camera (on its A380s). I’ve never been bored on an Emirates flight. The only downside to the entertainment is that there’s some censoring.
While Emirates does an amazing job with seat back entertainment, Emirates’ Wi-Fi is less impressive, at least based on the current state of things. The airline uses OnAir for a vast majority of its fleet, which has low speeds. On the plus side, it’s at least reasonably priced, and many passengers even receive free Wi-Fi. On top of that, all Skywards members receive free inflight messaging.
With Emirates’ new A350s, the airline is also offering high-speed Wi-Fi on an entire fleet type for the first time, though that’s only a small percentage of the carrier’s fleet as of now. The great news is that Emirates is also rollout out Starlink Wi-Fi, which will be a game changer for the carrier.
Qatar Airways
Qatar Airways offers seat back entertainment on a vast majority of its fleet, in the form of its Oryx One entertainment system. After ICE, Oryx One is probably the biggest entertainment selection you’ll find on any airline, with thousands of movies, TV, shows music albums, and more.
When it comes to Wi-Fi, Qatar Airways has historically offered “Super Wi-Fi,” where you can pay $10 per flight for Wi-Fi without speeds. However, the airline has been aggressively rolling out free Starlink Wi-Fi, which is now available on virtually all 777s and A350s. Qatar Airways is the airline that currently has the most long haul aircraft with Starlink, and that’s absolutely awesome.
Singapore Airlines
Singapore Airlines is probably the most well-rounded global airline when it comes to inflight entertainment, based on the current state of its fleet.
When it comes to seat back entertainment, the airline offers seat back televisions throughout its fleet, without exception. Singapore Airlines has the KrisWorld entertainment system, which offers nearly 2,000 on-demand movies and TV shows, as well as live TV. I love how Singapore Airlines also has complete seasons of dozens of TV shows, which makes it easy to binge watch.
I’d say this is the second best inflight entertainment, only slightly behind Emirates’ ICE system. The area where Singapore Airlines really excels, though, is with its inflight Wi-Fi. The airline offers unlimited free Wi-Fi to all passengers who are KrisFlyer members, and to first and business class passengers even if they’re not part of the loyalty program.
Singapore Airlines is the only major global airline to offer free Wi-Fi to all passengers on every single plane without any major limitations.
Cathay Pacific
Cathay Pacific offers seat back entertainment on every aircraft in its fleet, and the carrier’s entertainment selection is absolutely massive, with over 4,500 hours of entertainment. I find the airline has one of the best movie and TV libraries of any airline, so passengers should never get bored.
When it comes to Wi-Fi, Cathay Pacific offers free Wi-Fi for first and business class passengers, premium economy passengers enrolled in Cathay’s frequent flyer program, and Cathay Diamond and Gold members in economy. So the airline isn’t quite in Singapore Airlines’ league on that front, but isn’t bad either.
JetBlue Airways
JetBlue is the OG when it comes to inflight entertainment, plain and simple. For one, the airline has seat back entertainment on every aircraft in its fleet. This entertainment system has a selection of movies, plus DIRECTV, SiriusXM, Peacock programming, and more.
Frankly the screens on many JetBlue aircraft are a bit low quality at this point, and I don’t find the system as such to be cutting edge. But still, you can’t beat such consistency.
The area where JetBlue really shines, though, is in offering high-speed, no strings attached, free Wi-Fi. The airline partners with Viasat, and offers free Wi-Fi on all aircraft. You can connect as many devices as you want, and you don’t even have to be a member of JetBlue’s loyalty program. What’s wild is that JetBlue has now been offering unlimited free Wi-Fi for well over a decade, so the airline has been in a league of its own.
Delta Air Lines
Delta is by far the best of the “big three” US carriers when it comes to inflight entertainment. The airline offers seat back entertainment on most of its mainline fleet (with the exception of Boeing 717s), and that comes in the form of the Delta Studio system.
Delta Studio offers over 1,000 hours of inflight entertainment, with a library of movies and TV shows, as well as live TV, a map feature, and more.
Another area where Delta really excels is with inflight Wi-Fi, as the airline offers free Wi-Fi to all SkyMiles members on most aircraft. The catch is that this isn’t available on all aircraft, or in all regions of the world, so it’s not quite at its full potential yet. Hopefully we continue to see progress there in the near future.
Air Canada
Air Canada doesn’t get much recognition for this, but I think the airline is highly underrated when it comes to its inflight entertainment. For one, the airline has seat back entertainment on an incredible number of jets — the airline even has seat back entertainment on many of its regional jets.
Air Canada also has a massive entertainment selection, with over 2,500 hours of entertainment, including everything from movies, to TV shows, to live TV. Heck, the airline is even retrofitting its narrow body jets with new entertainment systems that include tail cameras, which I love.
When it comes to inflight Wi-Fi, Air Canada offers free messaging on all flights to Aeroplan members, and unlimited free Wi-Fi on most aircraft, particularly on flights within North America.
Bottom line
As technology continues to improve, many airlines are investing in inflight entertainment, but in different ways. Some airlines are investing in seat back entertainment, others are investing in streaming entertainment, others are investing in Wi-Fi, and some are investing in all of them.
Some airlines definitely stand out as being better than most, so the above are my top picks, as they’re all airlines on which I’m never bored. I suspect a couple of years from now my list will look every different, once some airlines have fully rolled out Starlink Wi-Fi.
What are your favorite airlines when it comes to inflight entertainment, and why?
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