JetBlue Improves Inflight Entertainment Personalization

JetBlue already has an incredibly impressive suite of inflight entertainment options. Not only does the airline offer unlimited free Wi-Fi to all passengers, but it also has seat back entertainment on all aircraft, with audio and video on demand, plus live TV. The airline has now announced plans to further improve entertainment options, with more customization.

New Blueprint By JetBlue entertainment features

JetBlue has today announced Blueprint by JetBlue, which is the carrier’s name for a more personalized inflight entertainment platform that will provide more customizability across the travel journey. Some of these features have never been offered on a US airline before.

The intent is that Blueprint by JetBlue mimics what customers are used to experiencing with their favorite streaming platforms at home. Among other things, Blueprint by JetBlue will offer the following:

• Watch party, whereby up to six passengers can watch a film or TV show at the exact same time, to enjoy family-style viewing; play and pause can be controlled on all linked screens, regardless of where each viewer is seated
• Content recommendations, whereby you can receive personal recommendations for inflight entertainment based on your previous viewing history
• The ability to pick up where you left off, whereby you can automatically keep watching a film or TV show where you left off on a previous flight, whether the flight is a connection, or a month later
• Saved favorites, allowing you to save a film or TV show selection to watch on future flights
• Saved settings, whereby accessibility and system settings like volume, language, parental controls, and close caption preferences, can be saved and carried over from flight to flight

As you can tell, many of these features will require logging into your TrueBlue account, as that’s how your settings will be saved.

This latest initiative extends on JetBlue’s existing personalization settings, like personal greetings, seat back ordering, and more.

One other interesting development is that a few years back, JetBlue introduced inflight entertainment personalization, whereby your name is displayed on the screen if logged into your TrueBlue account. Some people found this to be creepy, so you’ll now be able to change your preferred name on your travel profile, whether it’s your legal name or not.

Here’s how Jayne O’Brien, JetBlue’s Head of Marketing and Customer Support, describes this latest initiative:

“JetBlue has always been an innovator as the first to have seatback screens and fast, free and unlimited Wi-Fi on every aircraft. By launching Blueprint by JetBlue, we are doubling down on our commitment to help customers create an inflight experience tailored to their needs and preferences, making their flight as comfortable as their own living rooms.”

These JetBlue improvements are great, but…

Hey, kudos to JetBlue for even further improving its inflight entertainment, that’s fantastic, and these are some customer friendly changes. In particular, I love being able to sync programming between seats, since you frequently see people trying to watch shows on planes at the same time, but it can be hard to time it perfectly.

That being said, JetBlue has 99 problems, and the quality of its inflight entertainment isn’t one of them. I don’t think anyone has ever chosen not to fly JetBlue due to the quality of the carrier’s inflight entertainment. JetBlue’s fundamental issue has been that it can’t command a revenue premium for offering a better passenger experience, and that’s partly due to the carrier’s undisciplined route network.

So these changes are positive, and I recognize that the airline can work on multiple things at one time. But I don’t think anyone was on the fence about whether to fly JetBlue or Spirit from Fort Lauderdale to Santo Domingo, and this will move the needle. Anyway, I digress…

Bottom line

JetBlue is further improving its inflight entertainment, and is introducing a new Blueprint by JetBlue platform. This allows for even more customization, with some fun new features, like being able to sync programming between passengers.

JetBlue already had the most impressive inflight entertainment of any US airline, and now it’s getting even better. I’m not sure this’ll make the airline any more money, but I like it.

What do you make of Blueprint by JetBlue?