Jetstar's in-flight iPad rentals still months away..?

Jetstar's much-delayed launch of the iPad for in-flight entertainment is still several months, but the airline hopes to have the tablets in the air before the peak Christmas holiday period.

A Jetstar spokeswoman told Australian Business Traveller that the rent-an-iPad scheme is expected to debut "in the next couple of months", although we note that this exact same timeframe was offered in early August.

As we've previously reported,  the airline will be among the world’s first to adopt Apple's touchscreen tablet as its in-flight entertainment system and rent the tablets to passengers.

British Airways and Finnair have conducted trials and limited in-flight use, for example, but Jetstar will carry over 2,000 iPads across its domestic and international fleet.

(Qantas will also begin a six-week trial of the iPad for in-flight entertainment next month, using wi-fi to stream content to the tablets from a central server on a single Boeing 767-300 – read our detailed report here.)

Each Jetstar iPad will come preloaded with music, TV shows and music videos, games, ebooks and magazines, accessible through a custom-built Jetstar app.

The rental cost to passengers has yet to be set, and while $10 per flight was originally suggested nobody would be surprised to see that price closer to the $20 mark, especially on long flights.

David Flynn

David Flynn is the Editor-in-Chief of Executive Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.