United offers gadgets aplenty in new Business seats
By Donald Melanson 
posted July 25th 2007 11:14AM
posted July 25th 2007 11:14AM
Not one to let Qantas get all the attention for its tricked out airline seats, United has now introduced some upgraded amenities of its own. In addition to offering some low-tech improvements like lie-flat seating, the airline's new United Business cabin also gets a boost in the gadget department, including some new 15.4-inch LCDs, a USB port, and an iPod adapter to let you charge your iPod and play your own music and videos on the seat's entertainment unit. You'll also get 20 channels of "stored XM-branded audio," with an additional 30 channels of other "stored audio" also available for you to create a playlist from, with some noise canceling headphones thrown in for good measure. Look for the first planes with the upgraded seats to roll out sometime this fall.
[Thanks, Tom]
[Thanks, Tom]
We will see these sits only in first class, right? Even if only rich people will enjoy them, us poorer ones can do some online stock trading and invest in this new project. I really think it's something that will bring a lot of money.
Being able to skip the mediocre in-flight movies in favor of your own iPod flicks seems like an excellent upgrade.
I Still won't fly with United ever again. Worst service ever.
Pity it still costs a lot more than cattle class.
Pity some fools will stay pay loads more than this just to sit in First Class, which I can't imagine has much more than this.
United's service on international flights tends to rival most airlines, at least in First/Business. This will be excellent as many other airlines have intro'd sleepers in Business a few years ago, so it's good to see United keeping up. For a 14+ hour flight there is no way to fly other than First or Business... and the noise canceling headphones they use are actually decent.
"an iPod adapter" -- is it really an iPod adapter or is that an ignorant way to refer to an mp3/video player? Because i would like to charge and play music and movies from my non-iPod player. Or did apple pay crap loads of $$ to get their proprietary plug put into these seats?
I'm pretty sure Virgin offers all that plus massage chairs.