Delta this week announced it would be putting 250 Apple iPads in three new restaurants at its Minneapolis-St Paul (MSP) airport hub.The installation is part of a wider project to eventually have over 4,500 iPads at three of Delta’s main airports in the US over the course of the next 12 months.The initial 250 in MSP alone will rise to 2,500. New York’s La Guardia has already started featuring the tablet devices in concourse and lounge areas.At MSP, passengers will be able to do the usual browsing the web, checking flight status, playing games and on social networks, etc, as well as allowing users to order meals through what the airline calls a “intuitive visual menu”.Such moves do beg the question as to what is the motivation for introducing such a major initiative (in Delta’s case through a partnership with OTG, an airport food and beverage operator)?Officially, Delta says it’s all about providing a “unique travel experience”, which is obviously worthy of praise given that some airlines might be accused of not thinking about the customer “journey” during a trip at all.In the world of cut-throat margins and competition in the airline industry, presumably there may have been some kind of business case at the outset beyond just improving the customer experience? Maybe not.But perhaps consumers are actually drawn to such improvements by an airline, especially regular users of the airport hubs in question (in the same way that customers might be attracted to another airline because of its high-quality in-flight entertainment)?
Gravity always wins!