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Delta Air LInes hopes that keeping the passengers entertained on flights longer than four hours will keep them coming back on their planes and not the competitions.  By November 22nd every transcontinental flight leaving New York's J.F.K International Airport will have the services for coach passengers.  By 2008, Delta hopes to have it system wide from flights departing New York, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City. 

When installation of the seatback system is complete, every passenger in first class and coach on U.S. flights of four hours or more will be able to choose from 20 movies, 24 channels of live TV, 1,600 songs and 10 video games.  Flights from New York will get the new programming first, starting in the next few weeks.

The driving factor behind this entertainment expansion for Delta, simply put competition on long haul routes.  Delta said that their defunked LCC, Song, had them in every seatback and passengers really liked the live TV. 

"We needed to have a transcontinental product we can be proud of," said Delta COO Jim Whitehurst. "This is designed to help us gain (market) share."

First class passengers will always get the services for free.  Economy passengers on Delta will have to pay $5 for movies but music and games will be free.  It really is a good move on their part.  Though the airline has not disclosed how much this installation will cost them.  Some of the song planes have already had the seatback entertainment systems in them, so that should keep some of the costs down.  The installation is a positive for the company that is trying to find a niche in a market that already has so many airlines vvying for passengers.  This should allow them to compete with the LCC's like JetBlue and Frontier which both offer TV on their planes. 

USAtoday.com