December 24, 2007 – AN otherwise good year for the IFE and passenger communications industry is drawing to a close under the shadow of a well intentioned but clumsy and unnecessary piece of legislation.

The proposed US Family Friendly Flights Act is designed to make it impossible for children to view broadcast IFE content judged unsuitable by their parents. As an objective, this is impossible to fault, and it is to be hoped that the parents pushing for it exercise precisely the same vigilance within their own four walls. As a process, however, it’s a sledgehammer, and a costly one at that, to crack a nut.

A frequent observer of the US regulatory round, Inflight Online is aware of its quite fantastic cost and complexity, not to mention its vulnerability to manipulation by astute axe-grinders. Think of the FCC public consultation on permitting airborne cellphone use. This ran for several months’ worth of public service salary and Website maintenance, attracting many thousands of curiously uniform letters of objection. In the end a brow-beaten FCC has binned the idea at a time when airlines outside the USA are champing at the bit to introduce this promising service differentiator.

The cellphone odyssey provides another insight into what may be behind Family Friendly. Asked a few years ago if an aircraft accident or serious incident had ever been attributed to unauthorised use of a cellphone by a passenger, the FAA official responsible for keeping an eye on the question had to admit that, no, he couldn’t think of a single one. Urban myth is now busily conjuring up images of legions of terrified tots – it would be instructive to see exactly how many properly recorded instances of kiddy distress it took to get this bandwagon rolling.     

Still coming to terms with the closed-captioning campaign on behalf of the hard-of-hearing (Inflight Online, November 2), the IFE industry is now bracing itself for a new burden of unforeseen cost and complication as Family Friendly goes through the Congressional committee stage in preparation for possible enactment next year.

Its draft provisions include a requirement that all content be family-friendly and that airlines set aside family-only sections with no overhead screens. This raises issues of elementary justice and economics. First, the airline industry already stands on its head not to annoy its customers, selecting content with extreme care and paying a pretty penny to edit out any possible occasion of offence. Second, cash-strapped airlines would be compelled effectively to offer a “sub-economy,” IFE-free service in part of the aircraft, presumably with a sub-economy fare to match.

The industry is currently marshalling arguments like these in preparation for the scrap to come. Acting for the IFE providers, the WAEA is working with US airline industry body the Air Transport Association to build a co-ordinated response, starting with a letter to the lead sponsor of the legislation that explains the existing content selection and editing processes.

With luck, this effort will persuade the lawmakers that Family Friendly is superfluous to requirements, and that the airlines can be relied on to regulate themselves. If it doesn’t, then a few Market Economy 1.01 lessons will be called for. Just as the airlines now preparing to introduce onboard cellphone will use the control systems supplied to avoid driving away their paying customers, so the US carriers will listen to parents if they can show that children have been upset by smut or violence on overhead screens. The airlines are in business to keep their customers happy, not frighten them off. If in truth there proves to be a revenue- threatening problem, the carriers will without a shadow of a doubt redouble their already significant efforts to sterilise broadcast content. 

In the final analysis, this is something that should be solved without invoking the great clunking apparatus of the state, with its ability to heap ever more cost and ear-bleeding bureaucracy on to the airlines, not to mention senselessly blowing tax dollars. Inflight Online calls on the US lawmakers to give their harried airlines a late Christmas present and drop this foolishness forthwith.       

And on that seasonal note we would like to wish a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year to those of our readers who observe the feast, and compliments of the season to everyone else.