Delta Air Lines is creating an In-Flight Media Hub to grow its customers

Just 40% of a flight’s passengers are SkyMiles members. For every 10 people flying any given Delta Air Lines flight, just four are members of the airline’s loyalty program, SkyMiles.

A stat like that underscores the opportunity for the airline to grow its first-party data and provide a rich in-flight experience. One way it’s doing that is by offering free Wi-Fi and other in-flight entertainment options for SkyMiles members.

According to Delta CMO Tim Mapes, “40% of any given plane are SkyMiles members, 60%, therefore aren’t, which is a huge growth opportunity,” he told Adweek following Thursday’s announcement here at CES.

“When we know you are a member of the SkyMiles program, we’re then able to more directly interact with you via your text or your email,” he said.

Free Wi-Fi, rolling out in February, is the first step in a bigger plan to turn Delta’s in-flight entertainment system into a content hub with media partnerships that will let passengers access video, games and news that might otherwise be paywalled.

Starting in April, the airline will launch the Delta Exclusives platform with partners including The New York Times Games, Paramount+, travel publication Atlas Obscura and reservation site Resy.

The company will also integrate customer data and engagement history on the in-flight entertainment platform, which it calls Delta Sync, to tailor the content it offers through a logged-in account, according to Ranjan Goswami, Delta’s svp of customer experience design.

“Wi-Fi allows you to now come into our ecosystem,” Goswami told Adweek. “Delta Sync is basically an umbrella brand that says Delta is personalizing something for you, they know you, they see you, they want to give you experiences that are unique to you…We think our airline is the perfect platform for personalization.”

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“All of this content richness will play a part in what we believe is more membership than loyalty. It’s really how do we bring to life things that are transcending travel,” Mapes said.

For brands like The New York Times, the Delta partnership introduces a wide range of the publisher’s products to passengers.

“We really want to mean more to more people and expand how people think about The New York Times,” New York Times head of marketing Amy Weisenbach told Adweek. “Obviously, we have almost ubiquitous awareness, which is great. But we’re very much known for breaking news and politics. So we want people to know that we have Games and we have New York Times Cooking and Wirecutter and The Athletic.”

The in-flight enhancements come as the airline industry is still struggling to fully bounce back from the pandemic even as travelers have returned to the skies, Goswami said

“Coming out of the pandemic, we have got to make sure our reliability is exactly where it was when we got into the pandemic,” Goswami added. “In the app, we have to make sure everything is seamless, everything is predictable and it knows exactly who you are.”

Delta has found there is $300 billion of unmet travel demand as a result of the pandemic. And as more global markets reopen, Mapes said the airline will be there.

“There’s a certain amount of pent-up demand for the restoration of travel,” he said. “Travel is one of the things people reward themselves with and find ways to prioritize.”