Starting this summer, customers of Thomas Cook Group Airlines can connect to Sunstream, a new entertainment system with their own personal device and enjoy movies, TV series, music and magazines in flight.
Passengers flying with Thomas Cook can book excursions tailored to their destination on board as well as customise and download a personalised tour guide to use throughout their holiday. The system includes a chat function to stay in touch with friends and family on the ground.
“This fantastic technology provides quality and convenient entertainment for customers who want to relax and get into the right mood for their holidays”, explains Gareth Sutton, Director Product Thomas Cook Group Airlines. “We’re working hard on creative ideas that make leisure flying fun, from our pre-order duty free service Airshoppen, to upgraded cabin interiors, and digital, personalised entertainment systems such as Sunstream on short and medium haul flights.”
Via Sunstream, customers will also be able to order online from the airline’s duty-free service Airshoppen, with products delivered directly to their seat.
To use Sunstream, customers must download a free app. In-flight they can turn their mobile devices to flight mode and during the cruise part of the flight, they can activate Wifi on their device to connect to the entertainment server on board. While destination information, the access to excursion bookings and retail content are free, there is a fee of £4/4EUR per user for a premium entertainment package which grants access to all other media content costs, with a family bundle available for £15/15EUR.
Thomas Cook Group Airlines is gradually activating mobile entertainment across its fleet, addressing the current gap in inflight entertainment suffered by passengers on many other leisure airline and budget carriers. Currently, almost 70 percent of its 65 short and medium-haul aircraft offer the new system. Customers will be informed ahead of their voyage if mobile entertainment is available for their flight.
The Thomas Cook Group Airlines as part of the Thomas Cook Group plc. consist of four sun and beach focused leisure airlines: Thomas Cook Airlines UK, Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium, Thomas Cook Airlines Scandinavia and Condor Flugdienst. The airlines carry 16.7m passengers per year to more than 160 destinations, generating revenues of £2.8bn. The combined fleet consists of 94 aircraft including 25 new Airbus A321 that joined by 2016. The Thomas Cook Group recently invested 100 million GBP in comfort and new technology of all aircraft.
Specifications of the Sunstream app:
| Languages* | German | |
| English | ||
| Compatibility | Latest two versions of iOS (iOS 9 and iOS 10) | |
| Latest two versions of Android (Version 6 and Version 7) | ||
| Mobile Browser version of Google Chrome** | ||
| Mobile Browser version of Safari** | ||
| Video Properties | Frame Ratio | 16:9 |
| Frame per seconds | 30 | |
| Frame Size | 1280×720 | |
| Bitrate | 10000 Kbit/s CBR | |
| Audio Properties | Audio Channels | 2 – Stereo |
| Sampling Rate | 48 kHz | |
| Bitrate | 128 Kbit/s CBR per channel | |
*French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Spanish, Portugese, Italian and Russian to follow during the summer
**Mobile browsers will not playback videos due to Digital Rights Management (DRM) imposed by Hollywood Studios
To Download the Apps:
iOS: http://bit.ly/SunstreamApple
Android: http://bit.ly/SunstreamGoogle