Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Over the com­ing weeks, Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) will in­tro­duce wire­less in-flight en­ter­tain­ment to its ATR fleet. The air­line’s sole Boe­ing 737-800 NG which cur­rent­ly op­er­ates be­tween Kingston, Ja­maica and Flori­da will al­so re­ceive the up­grade. Con­tent will be de­liv­ered via the Caribbean View in­ter­face and will of­fer movies, TV pro­grammes, mu­sic, games, and a mov­ing map. As with the econ­o­my cab­in of the 737-8 fleet, pas­sen­gers will need to use their own de­vices to ac­cess con­tent. The sys­tem will not of­fer ex­ter­nal in­ter­net ac­cess.

Last month the lo­cal car­ri­er signed a part­ner­ship with Scot­land-based Blue­box Avi­a­tion Sys­tems Ltd to pro­vide the Blue­view wire­less in-flight en­ter­tain­ment (IFE) sys­tem. The Blue­view wire­less IFE sys­tem is used by sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al car­ri­ers in­clud­ing Air In­dia, Air Japan, Roy­al Jor­dan­ian, and Qan­tas. CAL and Blue­box Avi­a­tion Sys­tems pre­vi­ous­ly worked to­geth­er on the air­line’s old 737-800 NG fleet. In a me­dia re­lease Kevin Clark, Blue­box Avi­a­tion Sys­tems, said, “We’re de­light­ed to wel­come Caribbean Air­lines back to the Blue­box fam­i­ly. Their de­ci­sion to ex­pand Blue­view across their ATR and Boe­ing NG is a fur­ther tes­ti­mo­ni­al the qual­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty of our so­lu­tion. We’re es­pe­cial­ly pleased that Caribbean Air­lines ap­pre­ci­ates our in­tu­itive and pas­sen­ger-friend­ly GUI (Graph­i­cal User In­ter­face) de­sign, en­hanc­ing the pas­sen­ger ex­pe­ri­ence on­board.”

Caribbean Air­lines CEO, Garvin Med­era, al­so said, “Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pe­ri­enced Blue­box’s re­li­a­bil­i­ty and user-friend­ly in­ter­face on our fleet, we’re hap­py to bring Blue­view to our pas­sen­gers and to in­tro­duce it to our ATR fleet. With the ex­pan­sion of our net­work, and the ATR be­ing used on more routes, it was im­por­tant to in­tro­duce re­li­able IFE.”

CAL’s ATR 72-600 fleet op­er­ates both on the T&T air­bridge and around the re­gion. This is the sec­ond ma­jor pas­sen­ger ex­pe­ri­ence up­grade for the ATR fleet in the last few years – in late 2023 the com­pa­ny’s orig­i­nal five ATRs un­der­went a cab­in retro­fit to bring them in line with the rest of the fleet.