Virgin Atlantic x Microsoft - A Festive Flight

Virgin Atlantic x Microsoft - A Festive Flight

Another airline holiday season campaign that stood out was Virgin Atlantic’s ‘A Festive Flight’ , for which the airline partnered with Microsoft.

At London Heathrow Airport, each of the 264 passengers boarding Virgin Atlantic’s new 787 to Boston on December 24th was given a Microsoft Windows tablet and was told that their purpose would be revealed later in the flight.

One of the pre-installed apps on the tablet was called ‘Festive Flight’ and allowed passengers to connect to the aircraft’s onboard WiFi and track the progress of their own flight, as well as seeing where they were in relation to Santa, who was in the midst of his own airborne travel on Christmas Eve.

Whenever the Virgin flight and Santa’s reindeer powered sleigh were within communicable proximity of each other, Santa would respond to messages that had been sent to him by passengers using the app.

As the flight passed over Greenland, Santa appeared to radio the Virgin Atlantic pilots flying the aircraft, asking for permission to land on the plane.

A simple projector was used on the ceiling of the plane to make it look like passengers could see, through glass panels, Santa’s reindeer landing on the roof. Santa jumped out of the sleigh, wiped the snow from the roof and waved hello to the people inside.

Moments later, Santa appeared inside the cabin. He stopped to pose for selfies before announcing that the tablets could be kept as a gift and disappearing back into the night sky. Video and images of the event here and here .