Qantas’ Limited Boeing 737 Seatback Entertainment

If you’ve recently flown on one of Qantas’ Boeing 737-800s fitted with in-flight entertainment screens on the back of each seat, you might have noticed something a bit odd.

When browsing through the library of movies and TV shows, you’ll find hundreds of titles available to watch. But the majority of those programs aren’t actually available to watch using the TV screen provided. Instead, you would need to use the Qantas Entertainment App to watch the content on your own electronic device.

More content via the Qantas Entertainment app

You can still watch premier (new release) movies, TV show box seats and Paramount+ content using the Qantas Boeing 737 entertainment system. The kids content is also there – which will no doubt relieve a lot of parents.

But there are lots of other movies and TV shows listed in the entertainment library that aren’t actually loaded onto the system. Instead, once you select these options, a message appears to “Connect to the ‘Qantas Free Wi-Fi’ network and open Qantas Entertainment App to watch on your own device”.

It’s not a big problem for most people if they have downloaded the Qantas Entertainment App. But you cannot download the App while on board an international Qantas flight if you’re not flying over Australia at the time, since Qantas’ free Wi-Fi currently only works over Australia.

It’s also slightly inconvenient if you want to use your device or the space around your seat to do something else, and there are no device holders on the Qantas 737s fitted with seatback TV screens.

When I flew on a Qantas Boeing 737-800 from Auckland to Sydney last month, the cabin crew did make an announcement before take-off advising passengers to download the Qantas Entertainment App.

This is definitely a first-world problem, but nonetheless one that has perplexed several AFF members.

Although I have not seen this before on other airlines, I did recently notice that MIAT Mongolian Airlines had a lot more content available to stream via the on-board Wi-Fi network than were loaded onto the TV screen. That said, MIAT does not list titles on its seatback screens that are only available to watch by streaming to your own device.

Why is Qantas doing this?

A Qantas spokesperson told Australian Frequent Flyer that the airline has not made any changes to the amount of content available via the seatback screens on its 737s. This has always been more limited compared to the amount of content on wide-body aircraft like the Airbus A330-300s, Boeing 787s and Airbus A380s.

We understand that this may be due to storage capacity limitations on the system used by these smaller aircraft.

What has recently changed is that, since adding streaming entertainment, Qantas has started to list the extra content that’s available via the Streaming App on its seatback screens as well.

By using the Qantas Entertainment app, the amount of movies available increases from around 25 to 220. And instead of 50 TV show episodes, passengers can access over 1,000.

Of Qantas’ 75 Boeing 737-800s, 37 have seatback in-flight entertainment screens. Qantas recently added streaming entertainment to those aircraft as well. On the remaining 737-800s, entertainment is only available via overhead TV screens or streaming to your own device.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 80 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.