Alaska Air Promises Power Plugs at Every Seat and Streaming Movies

Alaska Airlines says it will begin installing power outlets at every seat on its Boeing 737-800, -900 and -900ER aircraft by this Fall, with rollout to be completed by the end of 2014.

The democratization of power (outlets) has arrived, in coach.

Besides the convenience of amping up their mobile devices to use the aircrafts’ onboard Wi-Fi from Gogo, passengers will find the dual 110-volt outlets and USB power especially handy because Alaska Airlines is close to a decision on a new system that would enable them to stream movies and other programming to their personal devices.

“We are considering an enhanced inflight entertainment system that will allow customers to watch movies, television shows and other programming streamed to any Wi-Fi-enabled device.,” says Alaska Airlines spokesperson Marianne Lindsey. “We have not announced a vendor yet.”

All of this would require a lot of juice from the new power outlets.

You can’t currently stream movies and TV shows with Gogo Wi-Fi as the bandwidth and user experience is constrained.

Alaska Airlines isn’t divulging any details on how this would work or whether the service would supplement Gogo or replace it.

One possibility would ental installing onboard servers packed with movies and other content so ground- or satellite-based Wi-Fi for this feature would be unnecessary — and the streaming potentially would be much more robust.

In addition to the benefits that Alaska’s passengers would reap from the new power outlets and streaming movies, the airline has 13 codeshare partners so travelers buying tickets from these other carriers could be in for some nice surprises, as well.