Thai Airways At Its Best: In-Flight EntertainmentPrepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
One of the many questions that I am asked in my Royal Orchid Holidays Weekly Travel Feature is about combating Jet Lag. What’s the best way of overcoming this most worrisome aspect of long distant travel by air?
What I tell readers is DON”T. Don’t try to overcome it. Sit back and enjoy the flight. After all, airlines have gone to great care and expense to please their passengers in flight, and the most obvious way is to give them first-class entertainment. And this is where Thai Airways enters the picture. THAI has just won a 2006 WAEA Avion In-flight Entertainment Award. Entries came from 42 of the world's leading airlines and were judged by a panel of 23 experts. The panel included leading media executives, critics, producers, editors and academics from Australia, Brazil, India, Italy, Singapore, Sweden, UK and the USA
Inflight entertainment at THAI had its earliest beginnings in 1970 when THAI purchased two DC-8-63 jets. The airline has come a long way since then. Those were the days when you went up to the ticket counter, bought your ticket with cash or travellers’ checks and picked the seat you wanted from a board behind the counter that showed the interior of the aircraft with stickers at each seat. The sales clerk removed the sticker you picked and placed it on your ticket.
Those two DC-8s came equipped with In-flight Motion Picture's (IMP's) 16mm film projection system but, upon arrival in Bangkok, the airline decided to opt for the recently developed and far more versatile 8mm film-cartridge projection system. This was a vast improvement.
THAI’s audio programming followed a unique path. Working for the airlines then was Claus Jensen, formerly with SAS, who lived in Seattle. Jensen was an audiophile and music aficionado. He served as THAI's US representative and worked in conjunction with Billboard Music In The Air and HI Entertainment. Jensen programmed THAI's music in his home studio. For years, he was the principal Inflight Entertainment coordinator for THAI.
Inflight entertainment back then was basic: Cupped hands by pretty hostesses in traditional Thai dress welcoming you aboard, an orchid corsage for women when seated and a choice of cigarettes in a beautifully carved silver tray when in flight. The in-flight magazine was an eight-page newsletter. As a travel correspondent for THAI, I wrote the first travel article for the first edition, with the title of A Tale of Two Cities. THAI had inaugurated flights to Hong Kong and my article was a comparison of Hong Kong and Bangkok.
That eight-page newsletter has become the Sawasdee, THAI's award-winning in-flight magazine. The content, however, is still the same: to produce a broad range of Thai-oriented articles and also to feature articles that tie in with THAI’s many cities that are served today. Sawasdee’s editor Dean Barrett saw the destinations leap from six to several dozen and a whopping 72 today.
In 1979, with the introduction of DC-l0s, THAI made a major decision and left their 8mm film-cartridge system to become one of the world's first converts to the far more versatile Beta II video projection system.
That decision ushered in a new world of in-flight entertainment programming options to the carrier. THAI dropped the bulky audio cassettes and adopted a cassette-based audio system. Concurrently, THAI became the first airline to feature electronic headsets, thus ushering in an era of enhanced comfort and high fidelity for their passengers.
Change has been constant. Those early in-flight movies placed emphasis on quality using the best techniques available at the time. Then came HI-8 players in 1984 and ten years later THAI became the second carrier in the industry to adopt Sony Walkmans. They have proved to be so successful that they remain in use today.
PTV (Personal TV) came to the fleet with the arrival of A330s in 1994, and in 2005 the airline added the 3000i AVOD (Audio and Video On Demand) systems to its latest-arriving aircraft.
Claus Jensen had his problems back in 1970. Today it’s even far more complicated, but, fortunately, Virongong “Vicky” Ratanachaya, Manager, Corporate Product Management, has grown along with the changes. She saw the airline grow, from that 18-page newsletter when she had to edit my stories, to what Inflight entertainment has grown into today.
Vicky joined THAI in 1974 as an Advertising Coordinator and sold advertising time in THAI's audio programming and print space in THAI's in-flight magazine Sawasdee (she remains on the Editorial Committee of Sawasdee.) Vicky's skills and experience put her in charge of other of the airline's in-flight programs in the early '80s and she currently, and capably, bears the responsibility of Overall Supervisor of the airline's programming. Vicky has a reputation for being an informed negotiator but she also has a much softer side. She is a very talented water colorist who could very well turn professional.
Vicky also oversees, every month, the production of THAI VISION, an upscale and handsome publication that serves as the in-flight guide to passengers in the airline's premium classes. Produced by the Inflight Entertainment staff and several representatives from other departments, the guide is published by the carrier in Bangkok. I am pleased to say that, aside from being THAI’s travel correspondent, for the past few years Vicky has had me reviewing movies for the magazine, along with writing programming descriptions and stories about film images. It is one job I am very delighted doing. Vision is a monthly publication with a 7,000 press run.
Vicky is the one who sees that it all fits together. She screens the movies and makes certain that its Thai-oriented programming reflects Thai culture and heritage. Movies are changed on a monthly basis and audio programming cycles through a bimonthly rotation. Special holidays and events receive appropriate recognition in programming and many other facets of the carrier's operation. When THAI celebrated its 25th anniversary, Vicky found a disk jockey who selected music from the year THAI was founded and played it aboard.
This past year was most important. This year the kingdom is commemorating the King of Thailand's 60th year on the throne and many of the events were shown aboard.
On the airline's AVOD-equipped aircraft, premium-class passengers have 44 video channel options with several dozen Hollywood films plus films from Thailand, China, Japan, India, and France. The films have various language soundtracks and/or subtitles that cater to the airline's varied destinations around the globe. In addition to feature-length films, other channels feature short-subject programming devoted to comedy, sports, children's cartoons, popular TV programs, Discovery documentaries, concerts, EEC, EEC World, technology, travel, and THAI's signature and award-winning channel, Thailand Today. This monthly program is a montage of Thailand's arts, festivals, shrines, cooking, and miscellaneous, and is produced by a Bangkok production company. The airline's KidZone is a collection of primarily G-rated films for children plus Cartoon Network short-subject TV programming and CDs with songs and stories for children.
THAI's audio on demand is a delight for music lovers who have a choice of 110 CD albums that run the full gamut of musical formats. When asked about the airline's most popular audio format, Vicky replied, "Without question, our most favored audio channels are the ones that relate to meditation. They involve local coordination, and we have them in Thai, English, Japanese, and Chinese, and they involve both music and narration."
Adult and children video game aficionados have a library of over 30 games that range from chess, poker, blackjack, and golf to a collection of Nintendo's most popular GameBoy titles. The library also includes five multiplayer games.
From choosing your seat by picking stickers off a board, who ever thought you would have the choice of 16 custom-mixed channels that include a full range of formats, including five with Thai music and others that feature Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Korean, and Western music plus a channel devoted to meditation.
Next week I am going to take readers on a visit to American West ghost towns.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q. Dear Mr. Stephens. My husband and I are planning a trip to Thailand, and when he asked what I wanted to buy, I said a Siamese cat. He laughed and said there are no such cats and that it’s only a name, like French fries. Do you know if he might be right? By the way, I do enjoy reading your stories each week. Beatrice Rice, Orlando, Florida
A. Dear Mrs. Rice. You may tell your husband that Siamese cats are real, and truly a product of Thailand. I have been told they are known for their air of aloofness, brilliant blue eyes, regal bearing and sharply contrasting colors. Siamese cats make delightful pets, being fastidiously clean, extremely intelligent and affectionate. The first official reference to the Siamese species occurred in five poems discovered in 1830, but dating back to the days of Ayutthaya. You might want to take your husband to the Rattanakosin Room at the National Museum. The nicely illustrated Samut Thai book is on display there. I wanted to take a photo for you but cameras are not permitted. I did check with a Thai friend who has several Siamese cats. She claims they are born pure white but display their variegated coloration within the first month. She also insists that their movements are graceful like Siamese classical dancers and that they are born Buddhist and never convert to another religion. There are pet shops around Bangkok that sell Siamese cats, if you are interested, but don’t tell your husband I told you. —HS
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
