Flying the Geek-friendly Skies

In August, Virgin Airlines launched its US domestic air service, Virgin America, to cater to some top American cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. The new service’s claim to fame is that it’s now the most ‘geek-friendly airline’. They’ve got comfy seats and reasonable prices along with the ‘Red’ In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) system — even ‘mood lighting’ has been thrown in. “Coach class for the creative class”, Virgin America is targeting America’s Net-hungry, business travelers who fly all over the country with their laptops and gadgets. And if you’re going first-class, you have large, white leather seats, to boot.

Gadgets galore and red

Most people who’ve flown on Virgin America are raving about the gadgets and the ‘Red’ system. Especially folks from Silicon Valley, where Linux and Google Maps on every back seat represent the ultimate in geekiness. Also, every seat has a power outlet, Ethernet jack and USB ports that can be used by notebooks and media players like your iPod, as well as by mobile phones in airplane mode. But the killer app on board is Virgin’s in-house developed, in-flight entertainment system (IFE), ‘Red’. It serves you movies, music, live satellite TV, radio, games, chat-rooms, a triptracker and even takes your order for food and drinks.

“It’s awesome to see the Penguin booting up at init time on every seat’s computer.”

Red is the coolest statement yet about Linux and Open Source providing mission-critical services cost effectively. Virgin chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL) to deploy a service-oriented architecture at a low cost and under a breakneck deployment deadline. Silicon Valley provided the engineers. Ravi Simhambhatla, director of architecture and integration at Virgin America, says Linux “…was a fantastic solution for us as our need for fine-grained control and scalability grew.”

Playing with Red

It’s awesome to see the Penguin booting up at init time on every seat’s computer. The nine-inch touchscreen with a 1024 x 600 resolution gives each passenger an on-screen dashboard to select entertainment, request food, drinks and more. There are three file-servers on-board to act as media servers. For the future, there are Wi-Fi access points but they won’t be enabled till FAA approval some time next year. Internet access is also pending FAA approval.

Some of the coolest features of Red are its interactive in-flight trip tracker using Google Maps and its ability to select from 3,000 MP3 songs with an editable playlist. It has free music videos as well as pay-perview movies. It has free Dish Network television shows, as well as Pay TV. It has satellite radio. And last, but not the least, there are multi-player games such as Doom, Mahjong and various open source titles. When playing music or watching a movie, you can fast forward, rewind, play, pause and stop just as you would on your favorite multimedia player.

Too little time, too many choices

With all these options, you could end up being totally wired by the time you’re ready to land! Music, movies, radio, TV, network games, online chats, e-mail and SMS — time itself will fly. You can chat any time in a chat room, or on a private invite-only channel with your friends on-board. And Virgin says VoIP and general Web surfing will be coming in 2008.

You may not want to fly this service as a red-eye — you’ll never get a wink of sleep. And let’s hope the pilots don’t start getting distracted with their own in-flight geeking and gaming!

I can’t wait to take a Virgin America flight. It’s a radical shift in thinking. Fun, geeky things to do while being entertained! Just when we thought our flying experience was getting more stressful, it got better, along with some fun thrown in. Thanks to open source.