Live presentations and product tests offered as in-flight entertainment

The initiative by German airline offers passengers the chance to experience live presentations and try out innovative devices.

Once a journey dreaded by business frequent flyers and parents alike, long-haul flight entertainment has developed leaps and bounds in the past decade. German airline Lufthansa has gone one step further to bring its offering to life with its open innovation platform FlyingLabs. The airline coined 2017 as its ‘year of digitization’, integrating FlyingLabs into this initative.

The platform has two offerings – live presentations and product testing – with selected experts providing insights into their chosen topics. Passengers can tune in using headphones, and ask questions if desired. At the same time, participants can use the time to test new innovative wearables, such as the Sleep Shepherd Blue, an adjustable headband that contains speakers and EEG sensors. This element is conducted in partnership with Lufthansa FlyingLab’s official partner, Wearable Technologies. The platform’s most recent flight was onboard from New York to Frankfurt, Germany, and featured advertising technology expert Terence Kawaja and NASA’s Cindy Chin.

Long gone are the days of tiny TV screens as the sole airplane entertainment form, with another airline even offering customers a live theatrical performance by cabin crew on board. Flight technology in developing in leaps and bounds, with one UK-based airline even predicting it will be operating its first electric passenger plane within the decade. How would a airline’s entertainment offering impact your decision to fly with them?