Emirates scoops prestigious in-flight entertainment award

Emirates Airline continues to be recognised for its excellence in passenger in-flight entertainment, with the recent acquisition of four international accolades from the World Airline Entertainment Association’s (WAEA) Avion Awards at an event hosted in California, U.S.A.

Emirates was the outright winner of the top award in the passenger-voted category of Best In-flight Entertainment in the World – Large Airlines, as well as scooping Best in Region for Middle East and Africa. The airline was also declared first runner-up in two categories judged by industry experts - Best New Technology and Best Single Achievement in in-flight entertainment.

Mike Simon, Emirates’ Divisional Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications said: “We are pleased that the industry and importantly, our customers, are recognising our efforts to provide them with the best possible in-flight entertainment as part of our overall commitment to customer service.”

“The considerable investment we have made over recent years in the latest technology has allowed us to continually bring our passengers the widest and best range of entertainment – our ice Digital Widescreen system launched last year features many firsts for the airline industry, including the ability for passengers to personalise their IFE experience by creating their own music Playlists as well as being able to access over 1,200 channels of entertainment including a range of movies, games, TV and audio.”

To establish the winners of this year’s overall and regional awards, in which Emirates was outright winner, data collected over a two-month period from more than 55,000 passengers was assessed.

In addition to these passenger-voted awards, the WAEA also presented awards in two further categories which were judged by a panel of 20 industry experts. The award for Best New Technology was won by the Aeromobile system, which allows passengers travelling on Aeromobile equipped aircraft to safely use their personal mobile phone. Emirates was the launch customer for this technology in March 2008 and currently has the system installed on 14 aircraft.

The 1st runner-up in this award category was won by Emirates directly – in recognition of the work done to become the first airline in the world to introduce closed captioning on movies, to aid passengers with hearing difficulties. During September, no fewer than 16 in-flight movies are offered with closed captions, on the ice Digital Widescreen equipped aircraft.

Emirates’ was also 1st runner-up in the category of Best Single Achievement in In-flight Entertainment – awarded for the creation of the Emirates Guide to 500 Years of Classical Music – the most comprehensive collection of classical music in the air, accompanied by a historical radio documentary to explain the various musical periods.

Emirates’ commitment to provide its passengers with the very best in in-flight entertainment began back in 1992, when it became the first airline in the world to offer personal TV screens in all classes on its entire fleet. Today, the airline continues to strive to stay ahead of the competition with an on-going programme of technology and innovation. Last month Emirates was awarded, for the fourth consecutive year, the much-coveted Skytrax award for Best In-flight Entertainment.