1 post tagged “channel9”

It had been a while since I had traveled on United Airlines. I am a frequent flyer on American, primarily because of the good connections they offered from Boston to Japan (plus once I was a Gold member, I had to keep flying them just to keep my status). So here I was flying back from the Community 2.0 conference from Vegas on Ted via Washington. I was very happy when the flight attendants reminded us about Channel 9 - the channel on IFE where we could listen to the communication between ATC and the pilots. I was suddenly like a kid in the candy store, putting my iPod away and putting my headsets on and tuning onto channel 9. It made my day. The 3+ hour flight to Washington and then the short hop from Washington back to Boston was so much more enjoyable (forget the crammed up seats or the food they serve - I really did not care). 

It felt so good to know what was going on - requests for higher altitudes because of light chop, transfers from one ATC  tower to another as we headed east, clearance to land and take offs, turns to make etc.

I really wonder why other airlines have not followed suit (hey, product managers are you listening?) and made this available on all flights for flyers like me. United has been doing this at least for the last 15 years that I know of. Interestingly, on the plane I was reading the book Citizen Marketers by Ben McConnell and he mentioned that Microsoft named one of their online communities Channel 9 after the very channel on United flights. Cool !!

I am already looking forward to my next flight - I may consider United just for this perk if I can, even though rest of their service has a lot to be desired. I don't care about DirectTV, give me Channel 9 and I am a happy camper (oh, but keep those flights on time though :-))