Thales FlytEDGE to power next-generation Delta Sync
This is a special feature from the April 2025 AIX issue of PAX Tech Magazine on page 41.
FlytEDGE will power the next-gen Delta Sync seatback experience
Delta Air Lines revealed at CES 2025 in Las Vegas in January that Thales InFlyt Experience’s FlytEDGE cloud-native IFE system will power the next-generation Delta Sync seatback experience. The airline expects to bring this inflight entertainment experience onboard beginning in 2026.
The hardware and software technologies of the system, powered by the first cloud-native IFE infrastructure, include cinematic 4K QLED HDR seatback displays with more than one billion vibrant colours and Bluetooth® capabilities for pairing wireless devices. The software platform runs on Thales’ Onboard Data Center (ODC) with 96TB of storage to enable edge caching and an intelligent recommendation engine that tailors content to passenger preferences.
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Niels Steenstrup, CEO, Thales InFlyt Experience
Niels Steenstrup, CEO of Thales InFlyt Experience, highlights the shared commitment to innovation between Thales and Delta.
"It's about seamless travel. It's about understanding how travellers spend their time onboard and providing the technology to support that," he tells PAX Tech. "It's about the experience."
Driving the “Delta difference”
On January 7, Ed Bastian, Delta CEO, took the stage at CES to deliver a keynote speech in which he unveiled several technology partnerships that will enable the airline to improve the end-to-end passenger journey in the coming months and years.
Bastian referred to the “Delta difference” as personalizing the passenger experience by ensuring airline staff and cabin crew are familiar with a traveller’s preferences, reason for travelling, milestones they may be celebrating and more.
Delta has 165,000 seatback displays flying today. Steenstrup says that any time a passenger is sitting on an aircraft with a seatback display, it is an opportunity to improve the travel experience through personalization.
It is with this customized passenger experience in mind that Delta partners with Thales, using FlytEDGE to power Delta Sync. Several features enabled by FlytEDGE are set to help Delta achieve its goals in expanding personalization and accessibility for passengers, including an Onboard Experience Planner, Seatback Announcement Translation and Arrival Mode.
The Onboard Experience Planner includes seatback features such as “Do Not Disturb” mode to give passengers the privacy and quiet they may need inflight. Future enhancements are set to include guided wellness and expanded options for customizing the food and beverage experience.
In terms of making the travel experience more accessible, the Seatback Announcement Translation is designed to help passengers understand crucial flight information. This service supports passengers with hearing disabilities or who may speak a different language than the flight crew communicates in, by providing flight attendants with the ability to send messages to seatback displays in the passenger’s preferred language.
Personalization comes into play with the Arrival Mode feature, which integrates travel information from the Fly Delta app directly into the seatback environment. With this customization, SkyMiles members have the information they need across all devices from gate to gate.
Simplifying content curation
For airlines, FlytEDGE facilitates data-driven decisions to constantly adapt the passenger interface with new features and curated entertainment at every seat. With the cloud-native system, Delta will be able to deploy the latest updates instantly to individual aircraft or the entire fleet. This seamless process will allow the airline to deliver the newest content curated by the Delta Studio Team to passengers more efficiently.
“From an operations and management perspective, Delta can deliver content and updates directly to the aircraft,” Steenstrup explains. “Anything that can run on the web can run on the aircraft, with FlytEDGE.”
The connected cloud architecture enables quick integration of Delta’s digital partners, improves data flow and future-proofs the aircraft’s IFE system.
“It means Delta is not going to have to wait for these monolithic releases every six, nine or 12 months to create a new experience for its passengers,” Steenstrup says, instead comparing the system upgrade process to updating an app on a smartphone. “That is a paradigm shift in terms of how IFE is done. They can link it into the backend operation systems, operate more efficiently, reduce costs and improve reliability. There's a lot of benefits.”
