Somewhere over the Atlantic this winter, a new kind of in-flight ritual quietly took off. Instead of scrolling through a dated catalogue of movies or half-watching a random sitcom, Air France passengers began queuing up Ted Lasso, diving into the boardroom drama of The Morning Show, or getting lost in the eerie corporate maze of Severance. With a freshly inked partnership that brings Apple TV’s most lauded originals to long haul cabins, the airline is turning the seatback screen into something closer to a personal cinema, and rewriting what it means to be entertained at 35,000 feet.
A High-Altitude First: Inside the Air France–Apple TV Deal
In mid January 2026, Air France unveiled a new partnership with Apple TV designed to elevate its long haul in-flight entertainment. The move hands passengers access to more than 45 hours of curated Apple TV originals, from Emmy-winning comedies to glossy prestige dramas, all woven directly into the airline’s existing entertainment ecosystem on intercontinental routes. For travelers, that translates into a viewing experience that feels less like a random selection of shows and more like opening a premium streaming app at home.
The content is organized in a dedicated Apple TV section on the in-flight entertainment system. Rather than dropping entire seasons at once, Air France offers the first three episodes of each featured series. It is a deliberate, cliffhanger-friendly approach: enough to get hooked during a Paris to New York or Tokyo to Paris flight, but just short enough that the story lingers in your mind after landing. The catalogue is set to refresh every two months, keeping choices current for frequent flyers and reducing the sense of déjà vu that often plagues in-flight libraries.
Crucially, none of this relies on an internet connection. All the Apple TV shows are preloaded into the system, so passengers can stream uninterrupted from gate to gate. It is a significant advantage on routes where connectivity can be patchy or expensive, especially during the rollout phase of Air France’s new high-speed Wi-Fi. The result is a seamless cinematic experience that works from boarding to touchdown.
For Apple, the skies offer a captive audience that may never have sampled its originals before. For Air France, aligning with a global streaming brand deepens its push to position the airline as a lifestyle label as much as a carrier, one that curates culture as carefully as it pours Champagne.
Your New Sky Binge: What You Can Watch On Board
The heart of the deal lies in the viewing line-up, and here Air France leans into Apple TV’s biggest draws. Passengers can settle into their seat and immediately find themselves back with the irrepressibly optimistic coach of Ted Lasso, a tonic for jet lag and pre-landing nerves alike. Those looking for something sharper can cue up The Morning Show, a series that dives into the politics and pressures of breakfast television, or Severance, which spins a dark sci-fi tale around the idea of surgically separating work and personal memories.
The partnership also extends into more niche corners of Apple’s library. Documentary fans can wander through deep time with Prehistoric Planet or join Eugene Levy’s reluctant wanderer on The Reluctant Traveler as he bumbles, wryly, through a world of luxury hotels and bucket-list destinations. For families, titles such as The Snoopy Show and other kid-friendly series turn long flights into an easier prospect, with enough episodes to carry children through a full transatlantic journey without repetition.
There is a strong French accent in the mix as well. Air France is showcasing series like Carême, a production steeped in French art de vivre, which sits comfortably alongside the carrier’s broader aim of exporting French culture through film and television. The airline has long dedicated around a third of its on-board catalogue to French language cinema and series, and the Apple TV tie-in strengthens that positioning rather than replacing it. Instead of a wholesale swap, the collaboration adds another layer of premium content to an already dense line-up.
Importantly, all content is accessible in both French and English, with subtitles and accessibility options to support deaf and hard-of-hearing travelers. The approach is inclusive and cosmopolitan, echoing Air France’s global network and acknowledging that contemporary series, especially dialogue-heavy dramas, demand thoughtful localization to truly resonate with an international audience.
Beyond the Seatback: Streaming Apple TV Through High-Speed Wi-Fi
If the dedicated Apple TV channel on the seatback is the first act, the second unfolds on passengers’ own devices. Alongside the content loaded into the in-flight system, Air France is offering a week of complimentary access to Apple TV via its new high-speed Wi-Fi portal. That access kicks in on board but extends beyond the aircraft doors, effectively letting passengers continue their series wherever their onward journey takes them.
In practice, travelers connect to the aircraft’s Wi-Fi network, open the Air France portal, and unlock a temporary Apple TV pass for their smartphones, tablets, or laptops. You might start Ted Lasso somewhere over Greenland and pick up episode four from a hotel room in New York, or finish a Severance cliffhanger back at home the next evening. For Apple, it is a sophisticated trial mechanism, hinging on the idea that if you are deeply engaged after three episodes at cruising altitude, you are far more likely to subscribe on the ground.
This strategy dovetails with Air France’s ongoing upgrade of its onboard connectivity. The airline is progressively deploying a new very high-speed Wi-Fi system across its fleet, including regional aircraft, using advanced satellite connectivity. The Apple TV tie-in is one of the first high-profile uses of that bandwidth, signaling that Wi-Fi is no longer just about work emails and messaging but about full-scale, multi-device entertainment ecosystems in the sky.
For passengers, the shift is tangible. The days of rationing one text at a time or watching a low-resolution map creep across a lagging screen are giving way to an expectation that a flight is just another extension of home or office connectivity. By pairing a headline streaming brand with free access, Air France is nudging travelers into that future without requiring them to make an immediate financial commitment.
The Hardware Behind the Hype: A Cabin Built for Streaming
None of this would matter if the screens were dim, the interface clunky, or the audio unreliable. Air France has been quietly preparing the ground for this streaming era with an overhaul of its in-flight entertainment hardware. Across its long haul fleet, more than 38,000 high-definition screens now deliver over 1,500 hours of on-demand content, and the most recent cabins step that up to true 4K quality.
These newer screens are anti-glare and paired with a redesigned, touch-responsive interface available in a dozen languages. Menus are cleaner, navigation is quicker, and content discovery feels more like scrolling through a modern smart TV than clicking through the airline interfaces of old. The Apple TV section is embedded into this ecosystem, making it easy for passengers to stumble upon a new series even if they board without a specific title in mind.
Audio has been rethought as well. A Bluetooth connection allows travelers to pair their own headphones or earbuds directly with the screen, a small but significant upgrade for anyone used to juggling cords and clunky airline headsets. It is a detail that matters when you are settling in for three back-to-back episodes of a dialogue-heavy drama, where sound quality and comfort can make or break immersion.
Beyond shows and movies, Air France is fleshing out the experience with wellness content, from guided meditation to seated yoga sessions designed to reduce stiffness on long flights. An updated moving map, enriched with live flight data and multiple camera angles on some aircraft, rounds out a suite that leans heavily into personalization. The Apple TV collaboration sits within this broader, tech-forward reimagining of what a long haul cabin can offer, rather than standing alone as a one-off marketing flourish.
From Canal+ to Apple TV: Building a Curated Sky Library
The Apple TV agreement does not exist in a vacuum. It follows an earlier partnership with Canal+ announced in 2025, under which Air France brought around 100 titles from the French media group onto its long haul flights. That catalogue, refreshed monthly, features Canal+ Creation Originale series such as The Embers, Of Money and Blood, and Versailles, alongside comedy, documentaries, and children’s programming. With both Apple TV and Canal+ on board, the airline is effectively layering international and domestic premium content into a single, curated platform.
Together, these partnerships reflect a broader strategy. Air France has long prided itself on promoting French culture abroad, dedicating a significant portion of its entertainment library to French film and television. Canal+ helps deepen that local lens, while Apple TV provides global marquee titles and a gateway into the current golden age of streaming series. The combination creates a catalogue that feels tailored to both the airline’s French heritage and its worldwide passenger base.
It is also a signal that the in-flight screen is no longer a secondary window for content that has already finished its run elsewhere. By aligning with services that are still actively shaping the cultural conversation, Air France is narrowing the gap between what is trending on the ground and what is available at altitude. Travelers are now more likely to find the same shows their friends are discussing on social media than a random mix of back-catalogue films.
For frequent flyers, the effect is cumulative. Month after month, as Apple TV updates its selection and Canal+ rotates in new originals, the in-flight library begins to feel more like a living, breathing streaming hub than a static archive. That sense of freshness is precisely what airlines have struggled to achieve in the past, constrained by licensing timelines and hardware limitations that made rapid updates difficult.
What It Means for Travelers: Comfort, Choice and Cultural Cachet
For passengers, the immediate impact of Air France’s Apple TV move is simple: more to watch, and better reasons to look forward to the long hauls that bracket so many trips. A New York based traveler might use the flight home from Paris to finally sample Severance, while a family heading to Reunion Island can count on keeping children engaged with recognizable characters and polished animation rather than generic cartoons. The boredom buffer of a flight suddenly feels far stronger.
The psychological dimension matters too. Knowing that you can settle in with a series you have heard about, but never had time to start, can make the prospect of a red eye less daunting. Instead of feeling like lost hours in transit, a long haul segment becomes productive leisure, a chance to catch up on the cultural backlog that many travelers carry. The cabin recasts itself as a private screening room rather than merely a means of getting from A to B.
There is also a subtle upgrade in brand perception. Aligning with a globally recognized, design-forward company like Apple helps reinforce Air France’s premium image. For an airline that already markets itself heavily on style, gastronomy, and French savoir-faire, the ability to say that its in-flight entertainment includes the same buzzy shows filling awards lists and entertainment headlines is a useful talking point. It situates Air France not just in the aviation industry, but in the broader lifestyle universe that travelers inhabit.
At the same time, the partnership encourages a more seamless relationship between the digital lives passengers lead on the ground and the experience they have in the air. Starting a series on a flight and finishing it at home blurs the boundary between travel time and everyday time. The journey becomes an integrated chapter of a longer narrative, rather than a blackout period where routines and preferences must be put on pause.
The Bigger Picture: The Future of In-Flight Streaming
Air France’s Apple TV launch lands in a moment of rapid evolution for in-flight entertainment worldwide. Across the industry, airlines are rethinking the balance between seatback systems and personal devices, investing in faster connectivity, and reconfiguring licensing deals around streaming platforms rather than traditional studios. Premium series have become as central to cultural conversation as cinema, and carriers are racing to ensure their cabins reflect that shift.
With this partnership, Air France sets a template that other full service airlines are likely to study closely. The blend of preloaded episodes on the seatback screen and time-limited streaming access on personal devices addresses both technical and commercial constraints. It minimizes reliance on bandwidth while the new Wi-Fi is still rolling out, yet leverages that connectivity to encourage trial and, potentially, ongoing subscriptions after the flight. It is a hybrid model that caters to tech-savvy travelers without abandoning those who simply want to plug in a pair of headphones and press play.
Looking ahead, the airline is leaving the door open for further customization. The Wi-Fi portal that hosts the Apple TV access is set to be enriched with bespoke content codesigned by Air France and its partners, hinting at future experiences that could blend destination storytelling, brand collaborations, and perhaps even interactive elements. As aircraft cabins grow smarter, there is room for recommendations based on route, time of day, or passenger profile, taking the streaming logic of personalization and lifting it into the clouds.
For now, though, the impact is already tangible: more passengers are returning to their seats with a sense of anticipation for what they will watch, not just where they are headed. The sky has long been a place for daydreaming out the window. With Apple TV now embedded in Air France’s cabin experience, it is becoming, more than ever, a place for getting lost in the glow of a very good story.