The Press Box

Bluebox’s IFE solution for visually impaired passengers wins APEX Award for Best Inflight Entertainment Innovation

Boston, MA – At an awards ceremony in Boston tonight, the launch of Bluebox aIFE with Virgin Atlantic was crowned the winner in the category Best Inflight Entertainment Innovation. Virgin Atlantic deployed Bluebox aIFE on 1 December 2017, making it the first global airline to make IFE accessible for passengers with sight loss across an entire fleet. The award was announced during the Airline Passenger Experience Association’s annual industry event, APEX EXPO. The other two finalists in the category were Singapore Airlines and their personalised IFE experience, and American Airlines’ inflight dual-screen live television.

“We are absolutely thrilled by this fantastic recognition for Bluebox aIFE from APEX and its judging panel,” said David Brown, Business Development Director, Bluebox. “This time last year we were in the final stages of developing the GUI for Virgin Atlantic with the input of our fantastic user group, and little did we know how much excitement it would create. We couldn’t have asked for a better way to kick off APEX EXPO.”

As the company’s contribution to directly improving the passenger experience of visually impaired passengers around the world, Bluebox has offered a free upgrade all of its current customer builds of Bluebox Ai and Bluebox Hybrid with Bluebox aIFE, providing a combined build that would allow cabin crew to select a mode based on a passenger’s needs.

The APEX Awards recognize innovative achievements across the airline industry that have been successfully implemented in the past year for improving passenger experience. The Best Inflight Entertainment Innovation award was created to award airlines and/or their vendor partners who have created a new inflight innovation that is elevating the passenger experience via GUI design, features/applications, streaming, hardware, seat integration, etc.