CIOIN

Gone are the days when a cross-country flight meant being stuck for hours without a way to contact the outside world. In-flight connectivity is going mainstream. Virgin America—one of the most tech-embracing airlines—recently announced substantial tech upgrades to its in-flight entertainment system at the Airline Passenger Experience Association Expo in Seattle. 

The revamp of RED (Virgin America's proprietary in-flight entertainment system) aims to improve seat-back entertainment for each passenger by offering larger, Internet-capable, touchscreen HD monitors, as well as Wi-Fi for them to connect their own devices to the Internet for the duration of their voyage. Passengers will be able to surf the Web on their seat-back monitor and connect multiple devices to the Wi-Fi at once. David Cush, president and CEO of Virgin America, said his airline wants passengers to multi-task across tech platforms with this new system.

To get all this technology off the ground and make its fancy new tech-equipped planes work, Virgin America is partnering with Lufthansa Systems. The IT company—part of the German Lufthansa Aviation Group—designed BoardConnect, an on-board Wi-Fi network found in the German airline Condor's planes. BoardConnect is currently in back-end testing on a brand-new Virgin America Airbus A320 cleverly named nerdbird. 

Since the equipment is still in testing mode, specifics are not yet available, but passengers can expect to see the new RED system on flights starting in late 2012. 

With growing passenger connectivity needs—and with competitors raising the bar—major airlines have a real incentive to push in-flight entertainment in an even more tech- and device-friendly direction.