Qantas: Regional jets to get inflight entertainment from October 2021

In its quest to out-region the regional airline REX, Qantas is now announcing that passengers travelling on 50 or so aircraft including Boeing 717, Fokker 100, Airbus A320 and Alliance Airline’s Embraer E190 s will soon be able to stream 2,500 hours of movies, TV series and Audiobooks via the Qantas Entertainment app to their own mobile devices.

Timing

The upgrades starting with QantasLink’s A320 aircraft this week will take until the 2nd half of 2022 to complete.

You will need the Qantas Entertainment loaded onto your device to take advantage of all this content, including that provided by streaming partner Stan.

2PAXfly Takeout

This is another timely reminder to wear your seatbelt when seated. Holding you close to your seat will protect you from the sort of injuries sustained on this flight, when unsecured passengers flew to the ceiling of the aircraft, and then came crashing down once the ‘drop’ ceased.

The hope will be that this is an anomaly – a ‘freak accident’ in casual parlance. If it is a systemic error either mechanical or electronic, then this is a larger concern for the airlines that fly Boeing Dreamliner 787 aircraft. Let’s hope it isn’t. If it is, it will pile on the woes to Boeing’s existing stack.

This is not all bread and circuses though. You won’t be able to access standard WiFi – from what I read in the release. WiFi is still reserved for larger aircraft such as 737s and domestic A330s.

Although I appreciate the rollout of entertainment to the regional fleet, it’s not that hard to remain entertained on these mostly shorter routes. WiFi on the other hand would allow me to continue to work. The ability to work and deal with emails etc would be a real bonus on regional flights.