How United Airlines could leapfrog Singapore Airlines

Conrad Chua
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

This is what greeted me when I settled into my seat on a recent regional flight on Singapore Airlines. That inflight entertainment screen in my economy class seat is only slightly larger than my iPhone 6S.

Within a minute of starting Ghost in the Shell, I could tell this was going to be a frustrating user experience. It was impossible to read the opening titles that set the scene for the futuristic world in GITS, or the subtitles when Beat Takeshi had Japanese dialogue.

The screen resolution was worse than my pre Retina display iPhone 3GS and at even the maximum brightness most of the details were washed out because I was in a window seat and I was not allowed to pull down the shades until we had reached cruising altitude.

Even though this was only a 2 hour flight, that movie became the main component of my service experience with Singapore Airlines for that flight and I have to say, it sucked. For an airline that prides itself on service, that entire experience fell apart because of that screen.

In contrast, I had the (mis)fortune of boarding an United Airlines flight some months ago that did not even have an inseat movie screen. Instead you were expected to stream movies to your device from the inflight Wifi service. I was actually looking forward to trying this but the flight was eventually cancelled due to a mechanical failure.


Now I am sure there is no passenger survey in the world that would rate United above Singapore Airlines in terms of service. But by providing in cabin wifi to stream entertainment to passengers, United might have stumbled on a way to leapfrog Singapore Airlines in terms of service. It is faster for an airline to upgrade wifi on its planes than to upgrade movie screens on every seat in its fleet. Removing inseat movie screens helps to reduce weight which saves money for airlines, and I would argue that passengers prefer to consume media using their own devices, than from an inseat movie screen that is controlled through a UI whose design philosophy reminds me of Windows 95.

Now if only United could fix the rest of the plane ….

Conrad Chua

Written by

Executive Director of the Cambridge MBA, Judge Business School. Lifelong Tottenham Hotspur fan. Writes about MBA careers and how to be iPad only professional.

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