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Mike Hickman · Group Creative Director · AKQAMike Hickman
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Group Creative Director · AKQA · Atlanta

A personal flight on a shared screen.

Seen from behind row 30, a woman in 30A and a stranger in 30B. Her seatback screen shows her trip details. Readable from 30B: her seatback shows a hotel for 3 nights, check-in 3pm, and a car pickup at 11:40, level 2, labeled Seat 30A, traveling alone.
Illustrative · Row 30. Onward plans on the seatback were readable from the next seat. Based on the 2024 cabin concepts.

Know me

I wanted the care you get as a regular at a good restaurant: people know your name, recognize your preferences and act on them without you having to ask. We wanted to extend that feeling to everyone on the plane.

The seatback welcome could acknowledge status and loyalty. The crew view made that recognition useful for service, showing seat-level preferences and dietary information so employees could respond to the person in the seat.

Seatback · what the seat knows

Seatback concept: a passenger recognition welcome that acknowledges status and loyalty.

Crew tablet · what the crew can do with it

Crew tablet concept: the readable-from-30B card for seat 30A, with service details and preferences for the passenger.
September 2024 cabin concepts, presented at CES in January 2025. The seatback welcome and the crew view of the same passenger.

Ask me how I want to fly

Knowing someone’s status didn’t tell us what kind of flight they wanted that day. Standard, Focus, Vacation and Wellness modes changed the emphasis across entertainment, distractions and rest. Earlier preference studies also offered a way to decline personalization.

Planning made those choices specific. Passengers could plan rest, ask not to be woken, and review meal and drink service. Their choices were intended to help employees respond during the flight. These were concepts for how the connected service could work.

Concept: Rest Easy, planning rest for the flight.
Concept: Do not wake, asking the crew not to wake the passenger.

Not on the screen beside you

The assistant on her phone, where typing stays private.

Typing to the assistant happens on her phone.

We explored showing hotel, car-rental and transport bookings on the seatback. That brought the wider trip into the cabin, but exposed someone’s onward plans to the passenger beside them. We were particularly concerned about that exposure for women traveling.

We pulled back. Detailed disruption information belonged on the passenger’s own phone. The seatback could offer help and direct the next step to Fly Delta without exposing their plans.

The assistant on her phone, where typing stays private.

The same boundary shaped the assistant. We limited it to flight-relevant needs and kept text entry on the phone, both for privacy and because typing on a seatback is awkward.

Input stays private.

Typing to the assistant happens on her phone.

Concept: the seatback offers help and directs the next step to Fly Delta on her phone.
The seatback offers help. Detailed onward plans stay on her phone. · Concept exploration

The concept was shown at CES in January 2025. Delta’s internal teams took the roadmap into production; the screens here remain the concepts we developed beforehand.

I would work more closely with the strategy lead if I ran this again. She was making the case for partners and the revenue that could fund new interactions. I was trying to protect the passenger’s point of view. Those choices needed an honest tradeoff conversation, and I should have made space for it.