Gone are the days when newspapers, old movies projected on a large screen, a deck of cards, or neck pillows could provide satisfaction to airline passengers. Carriers have started offering Wi-Fi access and power outlets so that flyers with smartphones and laptops will never be offline.

American Airlines and its oneworld Alliance partner British Airlines have raised the ante that would surely wow George Clooney's character from "Up in the Air" and other frequent flyers.

American Airlines announced during that week it will deploy 6,000 of Samsung's new Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices onboard select flights beginning later this year. The tablets will replace the airline's current personal entertainment device in American's premium cabins on transcontinental flights between New York's JFK and Los Angeles, JFK and San Francisco, and, Miami and Los Angeles served with 767-200 and 767-300 aircraft; international flights to and from Europe and South America served with 767-300 aircraft; and transcontinental flights departing from Boston to Los Angeles served with 757 aircraft.

British Airways, meanwhile, according to reports, has begun limited trials of the iPad on select Boeing 777 aircraft. BA spokesman Tobias Klitsch confirmed to Australian Business Traveller that the carrier is using the devices "as an alternative to the portable DVD players currently issued to first class passengers, ahead of a refurbishment of the aircraft's first class cabin towards the end of this year."

According to SkyClub News, other airlines like Finnair and Jetstar have been offering iPads for use in-flight. Finnair began last year offering to premium passengers the iPad devices on routes between Hong Kong and Helsinki. Jetstar said it will be providing the iPad as a replacement for their "usual in-flight entertainment device" for premium passengers.

Mary Kirby in an article at Flightglobal said that news that Airlines are starting to distribute tablets to passengers has prompted some observers to speculate that embedded in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems -- the typical in-flight entertainment equipment for music and video on demand -- are playing a rapidly diminishing role.

IFE manufacturers, however, believe that while the tablets may be somewhat redundant to the IFEs, the two can co-exist to provide enhancing in-flight entertainment experience.

"Our grand vision is that the airlines be connected, on the edge of the cloud. You'll have personal devices, and streaming video in some cases. You'll have onboard TVs and there are occasions where the airline may need something in the middle, based on a route structure or market need. An [off-the-shelf] device done right could be an effective solution so I think it needs to happen," Flightglobal quotes Panasonic Avionics CEO Paul Margis as saying.

"I don't necessarily see conflict with iPad-like arrangements supplementing IFE. In some cases it appears redundant but in other cases I think airlines see an opportunity for both, so we try to make our systems compatible with all those devices," Alan Pellegrini, head of Thales In-flight Entertainment, was also quoted as saying.

Panasonic's Margis, according to Kirby, acknowledges that some airlines do provide ultraportable devices to passengers out of competition. When a competitor has a better or newer embedded IFE, deploying new ultraportable would be easier as installing new IFEs would usually take 18 months, Margis says. Not only that, the ultraportable devices can easily be replaced.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 available on American Airlines flight is a WiFi-enabled tablet that measures at just 8.6 millimeters slim, making it the thinnest large screen tablet currently available in the world. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is powered by the Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) platform, which promises faster and smoother transitions between different applications. Samsung will customize the Galaxy Tab for American's in-flight entertainment needs, including the addition of expanded memory.

Apple Inc.'s iPad 2, which is the market leader in tablets, features a 9.7-inch touch screen, Apple-A5 dual core processor (2 times faster than iPad's processor), Imagination's SGX543 dual core graphics technology, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB of storage, front facing VGA video camera and a 0.7 megapixel still camera at the back, HDMI Support, and an iOS 4.3.3 operating system. The iPad also has more available apps than the other tablets. More than 90,000 applications are already optimized for the iPad that can be downloaded from the App Store, in addition to the more than 200,000 iPhone apps that can also work for the Apple tablet.Plus Apple has the iTunes for movies and music.

Flight attendants usually do not stop passengers from bringing with them the newspapers and in-flight magazines when disembarking from the plane. It would be a good PR if they give away the $700 tablets in the event of any flight delays.