Passenger In-Cabin Experience Report: IFE, Connectivity and Onboard Retail Trends
This report covers the in-cabin passenger experience across IFE usage, Wi-Fi expectations, onboard retail and the digital benchmarks airlines need to meet at scale.
Key findings
- 47% of passengers say they would be less likely to fly an airline whose Wi-Fi costs money. Connectivity pricing model directly affects route selection — making access architecture a commercial variable, not just an operational one. (Moment In-Cabin Experience Report)
- 97% of passengers use their own device onboard. Over 50% report frustration when charging outlets are absent or non-functional. Charging access caps the personal device experience before any content or commerce decision is made. (Moment In-Cabin Experience Report)
- 42% of passengers accept ads in exchange for free Wi-Fi. IFEC-driven advertising projected to reach $3.3B by 2030. The onboard screen environment is one of the highest-CPM captive audience channels available to brand advertisers. (Moment In-Cabin Experience Report; Valour Consulting)
- The A321XLR creates a new cabin experience challenge: passengers expect wide-body IFE and connectivity on a narrow-body platform. Operators deploying these aircraft without a digital cabin strategy create a measurable NPS gap versus wide-body benchmarks. (Moment In-Cabin Experience Report)
- Airlines closing the digital gap fastest treat the cabin as a retail environment, not a transport service. Digital ordering, real-time payment, and personalized offers outperform trolley-era systems on every measurable metric. (Moment In-Cabin Experience Report)
The in-cabin experience: what passengers expect and what airlines need to deliver
4.7 billion passengers flew in 2024 (IATA). 97% used personal devices in-flight. Demand for free Wi-Fi, on-demand entertainment and onboard e-commerce is now the baseline across cabin classes and route types. Airlines face a concrete challenge: match the digital experience passengers arrive with, within the constraints of altitude, bandwidth and hardware certification.
The narrow-body fleet expansion and the shift to BYOD are reshaping what inflight entertainment system infrastructure airlines need and how it gets deployed. This report maps where passenger expectations currently sit, how they vary by trip length and segment, and what the gap between expectation and delivery costs in satisfaction and ancillary revenue.
Connectivity is the new baseline, not a differentiator
80% of passengers consider onboard Wi-Fi as essential as seat comfort (Viasat survey 2024). 22% cite connectivity as a critical factor in airline selection, on par with ticket price. The market has moved past the point where offering Wi-Fi is a competitive advantage. The advantage now lies in how operators structure access, monetise bandwidth and control the passenger experience through a configurable Wi-Fi portal.
The inflight connectivity market, valued at $5.8 billion in 2023, is projected to exceed $19 billion by 2033 (Novaspace, The Brainy Insights). LEO satellite deployment is accelerating that growth, reducing bandwidth costs and enabling carriers who previously could not justify the investment to enter the connected cabin market. For airlines already connected, the cost pressure shifts the competitive question from infrastructure to experience quality and revenue capture.
IFE expectations: what passengers want onboard
Entertainment is the primary use of inflight time across cabin classes. 66% of passengers watch movies. 46% read. The remaining 28% are split between shopping for deals, checking flight information and other activities. These behaviors are consistent across route types, varying in intensity rather than kind.
The device profile is clear: BYOD dominates. 97% of passengers prefer using their own smartphone, tablet or laptop for entertainment. This makes the onboard platform a software and connectivity challenge as much as a hardware one. A wireless IFE system that operates without seat modification and delivers a browser-based experience on any passenger device is the architecture that matches how passengers actually travel today.
71% of passengers rate access to personalised streaming content as particularly important. The catalog must be current, the interface must be fast, and the session must initiate without friction. Passengers who hit a login barrier or a slow-loading interface return to the content already on their device and do not come back to the platform.
Onboard retail: the conversion gap airlines are closing
The inflight retail market is projected to reach $5 billion by 2030. Average onboard spend per passenger stands at $90 today, with growth projected to $120 by 2030. 26% of airline decision-makers identify building ancillary revenue as their most pressing commercial challenge.
The conversion gap is structural. Payment infrastructure that does not support digital wallets, loyalty point redemption or multi-currency checkout is the primary barrier. 50% of global e-commerce transactions were made via digital wallets in 2023. Airlines operating card-only or cash payment systems are misaligned with where passengers already are in their purchasing behavior.
A well-configured onboard retail platform addresses this at the point of purchase: offer presentation, payment processing and delivery confirmation in a single flow that works on the passenger’s own device. The full conversion data, including drop-off rates by payment method and purchase category benchmarks, is in the downloadable report.
What the in-cabin data tells airline strategy teams
The gap between what passengers expect and what most airlines currently deliver is narrowing but not closed. The airlines closing it fastest share three characteristics: a connected cabin with operator-controlled access logic, a content platform that updates dynamically rather than on a fixed cycle, and a retail layer integrated into the same passenger interface rather than treated as a separate service.
These are not independent investments. The IFE platform that serves content is the same layer that serves retail, advertising and loyalty. Operators who build them separately build the conversion gap into their architecture.
This report covers in-cabin passenger expectations across IFE usage, Wi-Fi requirements and onboard retail, with segment-level data by route type and cabin class. It includes the digital benchmarks airlines need to assess their current position and the gap analysis framework to prioritise investment. Used by IFE managers, cabin product leads and commercial teams at airlines evaluating their in-cabin passenger strategy. Free download.
Frequently asked questions
What technologies most improve the passenger cabin experience?
Reliable connectivity is the prerequisite — without it, every other digital cabin investment underdelivers. Once connectivity is stable, the highest-impact technologies are BYOD-optimized IFE (97% of passengers use their own device and benchmark the experience against ground apps), digital ordering systems that eliminate the trolley bottleneck and extend the purchase window across the full flight, and real-time payment infrastructure that includes digital wallets. Airlines that deploy these three in an integrated platform — single interface, single checkout — consistently outperform airlines that run them as separate systems.
How does IFE quality affect passenger satisfaction and loyalty?
IFE quality is a top-three driver of inflight satisfaction alongside seat comfort and crew service. The key variables are content freshness, BYOD interface performance, and charging access. Charging is the most underinvested variable: more than 50% of passengers report frustration when power outlets are absent — capping the personal device experience before any content or commerce decision is made. Airlines with reliable connectivity, regularly updated content catalogues, and functional charging on all seats report measurably higher NPS on equipped routes. The reverse is also true: equipping a route with connectivity and then delivering dropouts actively damages NPS versus a non-equipped benchmark.
What do passengers want from digital cabin services in 2025?
Consistency and ground parity. Passengers do not evaluate the digital cabin against what airlines offered five years ago — they benchmark it against their daily digital experience on the ground. A stable connection, fast interface load times, their own device as the primary screen, digital wallet checkout, and access to entertainment, retail, and ordering in a single interface: this is the 2025 baseline. Anything below it is experienced as a gap, not as an average. Airlines that meet this baseline do not differentiate on it — they simply avoid the NPS penalty that airlines below it are paying on every equipped route.
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