Qantas, Australia’s national airline, recently announced that it would start offering Gear VR, Samsung’s new virtual reality device, on select flights. The devices will be initially available for passengers flying first class between Australia and Los Angeles, and Qantas’ first-class lounges at the Melbourne and Sydney airports. The lounges will be stocked with the units as soon as mid-February, whereas the planes themselves won’t be offering the device until mid-March.
According to Qantas’ press release, only the A380 flights will be equipped with the headsets. The Gear VR will be used with a Qantas app on the Note 4, showing immersive videos created by Qantas to show off the airline and Australia — including a 360-degree look at the Qantas first-class lounge in LAX, runway-side videos of A380s landing and taking off, and a virtual reality boat ride down a Northern Territory river in Kakadu co-shot with Tourism NT and video production company Jaunt.
Qantas marketing chief Olivia Wirth says it’s a “unique” experience, and one that its airline competitors have no equivalent to. Samsung is apparently a “natural partner” for Qantas in this area, and the Gear VR is itself a unique product in the world of smartphones. However, if you’re just looking to experience the virtual reality headset, though, it might be wiser to just buy the $200 Gear VR and the $700 phone to power it, as each top-tier round-trip ticket for those Qantas flights cost roughly 20 grand.