by Maybe that’s a Mission Impossible, or jaunt into the Marvel Universe. Maybe it’s a guilt-free deep dive Harry Potter canon – or a wild card movie you’ve never heard of, with a small budget and subtitles.
Whatever your choice of in-flight film, it says a lot about you, your journey and your mindset, says Maura Chacko – and she should know, because without her and her team, you might not be watching for nothing.
Chako is the Senior Vice President of Content Experience at Spafax, the leading global provider of inflight entertainment. If you’ve flown anywhere in the world, you’ve probably come across its services without even realizing it: it hosts movies, TV shows and audio programs for many of the world’s major airlines, including BA , Iberia, Qatar Airways, Etihad and Emirates – snapping up the rights to choose it, whisk it from the studio to your seat back screen.
“The ‘comfort food’ thing is so important,” says Chacko. “When you’re tired, anxious or stressed, you just want something positive and familiar, like that. Friends box set or classic BBC like Downton Abbey popular options on evening flights. But for a day trip, when you’re feeling happy and alert, you might have more adventurous tastes – maybe splurge on a foreign language film, or a harder drama.”
Every month, the Spafax team sift through hundreds of hours of global content at their trendy mews headquarters near Mayfair, selecting and buying entertainment for millions of miles-high viewers. Its reach puts Netflix and Disney+ to shame, featuring everything from Hollywood’s hottest blockbusters to arthouse sleeper hits – programming designed to entertain the entire world.
Nudity or violence? It’s complicated
The most popular genre? “Action and adventure, every time,” says Chacho. “It’s so universal. Comedy comes next, but it doesn’t always translate well between languages and cultures – but the big-budget, eye-popping special effects of Tom Cruise’s films delight almost everyone. That said, classics like comedy The Big Bang Theory and Friends always at the top of the most viewed charts – and that trend cuts across generations.”
If you get more emotional than usual while watching an in-flight movie, you’re not the only one. “You’re more likely to hear something on a plane than you are sitting on your sofa – that’s a fact,” says Chacko. “Altitude and the whole experience of flying makes people teary eyed when watching movies, in the same way they change your taste buds – so it’s not unusual to find yourself crying over something you wouldn’t you usually cry.”
Recent airline viewership figures reflect Spafax’s trend data perfectly. On Emirates, the most watched content of 2023 was included Top Gun: Maverickalongside the lord of the rings trilogy and all four hitman John Wick movies. Download the rom-com George Clooney and Julia Roberts Ticket to Paradise top came out too, as did the visual stunner Avatar: The Way of the Water. Elsewhere, The White Lotus it was another hit, with Qantas passengers racking up 300,000 hours in the second season last year.
But certain genres or themes are off limits, says Julieta Bowyer, Spafax’s director of global content, who oversees its industry-leading offering of non-English language films and TV shows. “Each airline has its own taste in content, and guidelines that reflect the sensitivities of its own nationality. For example, films with nudity may be fine for Scandinavian clients, but violence is not allowed for them. Whereas a US-based airline might have a very low threshold for anything risqué, but it might be perfectly fine with violence.” And a view closer to home? “Nudity and violence tend not to be an issue in Western Europe,” says Bowyer.
Prohibited topics and genres
Other options are much less nuanced. Aviation disaster plots are vetoed, of course, but also some criticism of governments (“airlines have all nationalities on board”) and shows that could be considered inflammatory to current geopolitical issues or conflicts. But it’s not always black-and-white. In December, for example, British Airways decided to “pause” the Jewish sitcom Hapless from its in-flight entertainment, allegedly over concerns that it could fuel animosity in the wake of the war between Israel and Hamas – before promising to put back in the future. months.
Natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, can also prompt a rapid rethinking of content. “The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, for example,” says Chako. “When something like that happens, you’re thinking about any movie that might have natural disasters in it – which one should you take out of airplanes?” The decision is not taken lightly, because it is so logistically complex: “You have to physically remove the material from every aircraft in the fleet, there is no central database where you can simply remove it – so that has a huge cost implication. In some cases, adding or removing film is as low-tech as taking a USB stick or SD card to an aircraft, as crazy as it sounds.”
A long way from VHS and Betamax
With over 30 years of inflight entertainment experience between them, Chako and Bowyer have seen the industry change dramatically. “When I started 16 years ago, in-flight entertainment worked on a tape system: all aircraft content came on VHS or Betamax, and it was played on those screens that came down from the ceiling, which everyone watched together – do you remember that?”
Bowyer says, laughing: “And the maximum length was two hours, 15 minutes. Any film longer than that, you could not show; anything shorter, you had to send in a TV episode to fill the rest. When he played out, he would rewind himself and just start over. Terrible!”
It was the job of the cabin crew to load up the fragile tapes, which would gradually separate over the course of a season. “In very hot destinations they would even melt,” recalls Chako.
Now, of course, we all carry our own screens – so is our appetite for in-flight movies waning? “Far from it,” says Bowyer. “Most viewers are used to two screens, scrolling while watching TV – so if anything, they feel more at home.” But still, content providers and airlines know they can’t rest on their laurels. “The trick is to keep a great audience, to give them something they didn’t know they wanted.”
While Hollywood movies are the biggest hits, world content is also growing, says Bowyer – who watches about 25 new movies every month. What is the secret to success? “There’s no slow burner,” she says. “The cinema is not like flights, where you stick to it. If it doesn’t hit me in the first few minutes, it’s out – but if it’s a hit, I can feel it right from the start.”
