Air India, Thales sign 10-year IFE maintenance agreement for widebody fleet

• Air India has signed a 10-year FlytCARE agreement with Thales to manage IFE maintenance across 57 widebody aircraft equipped with AVANT Up systems. 
• The agreement addresses the complexity of maintaining IFE across aircraft at different stages—retrofit 777s/787-8s and incoming A350s and 787-9s—by placing support with the OEM. 
• It provides a defined maintenance setup for the AVANT Up fleet as retrofit work continues and new aircraft are added to service.

In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) has become one of the more consistent drivers of passenger satisfaction on long-haul routes, a point the airline industry has spent the last decade quantifying. The Airline Passenger Experience Association, which tracks cabin product performance across global carriers, places IFE hardware among the highest-impact variables in passenger loyalty scores—ahead of most service improvements that depend on staff delivery. 

For airlines competing on long-haul routes, a functional IFE system is not a differentiator in any exceptional sense; it is the baseline expectation. What determines whether that expectation is met, flight after flight across a large fleet, is the maintenance infrastructure built around the hardware.

Air India has signed a 10-year agreement with Thales under its FlytCARE programme, covering in-flight entertainment systems across 57 of its widebody aircraft. FlytCARE is a turnkey support model under which Thales manages the full chain—line maintenance, spares pooling, repair, and logistics—from its own facilities at Delhi and Mumbai airports, providing Air India OEM-level support at its main operating bases.

The agreement covers Boeing 777s and 787-8s being retrofitted with Thales’ AVANT Up system, plus 12 new widebody aircraft—787-9s and A350s—arriving with AVANT Up installed at the time of delivery, with inductions continuing over the next two years.

AVANT Up is Thales’ current generation widebody IFE platform, featuring 4K HDR touchscreens, 60W USB-C fast charging, and simultaneous dual Bluetooth device pairing.

The system has drawn orders from some of the world’s largest long-haul operators—Emirates selected AVANT Up for its full order of 50 Airbus A350-900s in a $350 million contract.

And American Airlines flew its first 787-9 with AVANT Up in June 2025, the first of 30 such aircraft the carrier plans to induct by 2029.

Thales’ AVANT IFE family, across its generations, now flies on over 1,800 aircraft globally. Air India became the first carrier in the Asia Pacific to operate AVANT Up when its new 787-9 entered service in January 2026.

Air India’s decision to lock in a decade of OEM-managed support is partly a function of where the airline stands in its fleet programme. Its legacy 777-300ERs and 787-8s are mid-way through a retrofit cycle that has already been extended to 2028 due to seat supplier delays—those aircraft will carry AVANT Up in varying states of installation for several more years before the fleet reaches a uniform standard.

New 787-9s and A350s are arriving at the same time. Managing IFE maintenance across aircraft at such different stages, each with its own spares profile and software version, is the kind of complexity that a centralised OEM support model is designed to absorb.

Jeremy Yew, Air India’s Senior Vice President for Engineering Maintenance, described the outcome the airline is seeking: faster turnaround, deeper technical support, and enhanced component availability across the fleet.

AVANT Up is not, however, the only IFE platform Air India is bringing into service.

In April 2025, the airline selected Panasonic Avionics’ Astrova system for 34 new widebody aircraft—six A350-1000s, 14 A350-900s, and 14 Boeing 787-9s—with Panasonic Technical Services responsible for that fleet’s support.

Astrova, which crossed 100 airline programme commitments globally by late 2025, uses 4K OLED HDR10+ displays with up to 67W USB-C charging. 

The two systems match closely in specification but operate through entirely separate support arrangements. Air India will manage parallel maintenance structures across a combined widebody IFE fleet that will exceed 90 aircraft.

The FlytCARE agreement commits Thales to the AVANT Up fleet through the next decade—a period that spans completion of Air India’s current retrofit programme and the continued induction of new widebody deliveries under its 470-aircraft order book.

Air India is simultaneously managing ageing aircraft being overhauled, new aircraft entering service, and a long-haul network being rebuilt to compete with carriers that have had consistent cabin products for years.

Having OEM-managed IFE support structured and operational across 57 widebodies gives the airline one less variable to manage through that process.

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