Spafax zeroes in on airline workflow painpoints with PRISM
This is a special feature from the November 2025 APEX FTE Asia Expo issue of PAX Tech, on page 19.
Tracy Cartaxo, Senior Global Product Owner, Spafax, and Dimitrios Tsirangelos, VP Business Development IFE Technology & Innovation, Spafax at APEX Global EXPO 2025
Spafax revealed its IFE Client Portal, PRISM, at APEX Global EXPO 2025 in Long Beach, California this September. PRISM is one of the most advanced IFE client portals in the market, built with a suite of industry-first features designed to transform how airlines manage inflight entertainment workflows.
Tracy Cartaxo, Senior Global Product Owner, Spafax, is the owner of PRISM and has been with it since its inception. The product was built from the ground up with a team of developers based in Canada.
“This tool was built for airlines by airlines,” Cartaxo tells PAX Tech, adding that she has worked with Spafax’s airline clients throughout the entire process, viewing it as a partnership. “They are PRISM’s end users, so their opinions really matter,” she explains. “We put their ideas into development. What has resulted is a product that we are very proud of, that is very useful. It is even being used by our airlines at APEX Global EXPO this week for discussions with the different distributors.”
Tracy Cartaxo, Senior Global Product Owner, Spafax
Cartaxo hints at many IFE industry firsts in the client portal, with details to come at a later date. At present, 80 percent of Spafax’s clients have been onboarded, with the remaining clients set to be onboarded by the end of the year.
“Because we are so confident that we have the most advanced client portal in the IFE industry, we decided to do a 15-minute workflow challenge, which is also an IFE industry first,” she reveals.
Spafax invited airlines to challenge Cartaxo as a product owner during the EXPO by presenting their biggest painpoint in IFE content workflow and asking her to solve it in 15 minutes or less.
To solve the presented problem, Cartaxo either used the PRISM client portal or referenced a list of all of the upcoming features.
“If the key was in neither of those, I provided them with a tailored Spafax solution,” Cartaxo explains of the challenge. “We booked more than 20 airlines for this 15-minute client portal challenge. So, it was a very successful week.”
As for how PRISM is enhancing the passenger experience, Dimitrios Tsirangelos, VP Business Development IFE Technology & Innovation, Spafax, explains that the system’s ability to streamline an airline’s content workflow can help passengers see the relevant content they want onboard, faster.
“Today’s passengers want it right now – they see something at home and they want it onboard the aircraft. To create this experience, it is the whole landscape, like the content management system, the content delivery system and all these cloud processing and API interfaces between the different tools that make it possible to deliver relevant content to a passenger more quickly,” he says.
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Dimitrios Tsirangelos, VP Business Development IFE Technology & Innovation, Spafax
Cartaxo calls the PRISM client portal a “workflow evolution” that is helping airlines move beyond disconnected Excel spreadsheets and complicated email chains.
“We have removed the heavy lifting, automated and streamlined the processes, resulting in more time,” she tells PAX. “Airlines have more time, our account teams have more time, and that time is where you can focus on what matters the most, which is customer satisfaction and customer experience.”
With more time to dedicate to improving the passenger journey rather than solving stagnant workflow challenges, Spafax is homing in on the details of the user experience.
“Now we are focusing more on smarter curation of titles and even the way that our passengers see the GUI, like the seatback screen,” says Cartaxo. “We have built an emulator that is custom-built for each of ourairlines, so they get to see how the passengers are going to digest that information every single month.”
