United Airlines is upgrading its inflight entertainment selections and its WiFi offerings, but for avgeeks and other less avid flying enthusiasts, the one that puts the icing on the cake is Control Tower View, a pre-flight view of the airport itself.
Now, while you’re strapped in and sitting on the tarmac waiting for take-off, instead of depending on occasional pilot announcements, you’ll be able to view a map of the airfield overlaid with all the aircraft around you, on the ground and landing, and you’ll be able to see that you’re plane is number 14 in the queue—ooh, now we’re number 13—and watch it move on the screen.
United’s head of inflight entertainment told attendees at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show that “We thought it’d be really cool that customers could see where they are on the airfield. We already have pretty good quality zoom-level maps, like down to kind of street-level view, and we said, well, it’d be great to have that airfield terminal level where you could actually see where you’re at. Cool for aviation geeks, watching the little planes move around, but also I think it’s really helpful for customers.”
Control Tower View is not the only update announcement from United; the company reported that it now has seatback screens in 600 or so of its 1000 planes and expects to have them in all within a couple of years; it’s also in the midst of installing Starlink satellite-based WiFi across the fleet.
