JetBlue has a new partnership with Autio, the location-based audio story provider. Autio works with many partners – sometimes at a community level – to narrate histories as folks road-trip across the United States. Now JetBlue passengers can listen to Autio stories via AVANT seatback screens with a headset jack, regardless of seating class.

Taking the road trip to the skies

Photo: JetBlue

Guests with a free Autio account can access five stories per year. With a paid account at $36 a year can have unlimited access to over 10,000+ stories with locations across the entire United States. The Autio stories themselves are normally about 3-5 minutes long and focus on around about 29 destination cities with 250+ stories about each of them, or passengers can listen to the 10,000+ stories that include places their JetBlue flight is passing over.

This is the first collaboration between Autio and any airline. For Woody Sears, CEO and Co-Founder at Autio,

“We’re excited to partner with JetBlue and take Autio to new heights with our first in-flight integration, with 250+entertaining stories about their destinations”.

Why was Autio created?

Photo: Autio

Founded by passionate road trippers, including Kevin Costner, Woody Sears, and Ben Werlin, Autio was created to tell the stories of places in the world. Designed to bring to life the communities and cities travelers are passing by, the Autio app automatically plays as you pass significant landmarks along your journey. Covering history, sports, music, culture, geology and more, the stories set out to answer the questions you may not have thought to ask.

According to the company,

Autio is a new way to tell the American story. As co-founder Kevin Costner explained,

“In joining Autio my primary goal was to shine a light on the history and stories of our nation starting with the creation of the United States and indigenous people. Our passion for creating artful narratives about the personal history of our country will continue to be one of our company’s pillars. Autio signifies our continued focus to spark interesting conversation through short anecdotes for listeners on any type of journey.”

In an interview with Travel & Leisure, Costner expounded on this concept. He explained that Autio was born partly because getting his three kids on road trips to care about the history they were riding through versus their games was tough – even a simple request to disembark the vehicle and read interpretive signs along the way. But Costner's interest in the drama and history of places has spurred him to develop a solution, as he noted,

Clearly, being able to bring together Autio with commercial flight will take historical education to a whole new level. As a history buff and aerial photographer, this author believes that Autio will allow one to have a historical interpretive display from the air via the air.

Autio is proving to be very popular

Graphic: Autio

Autio is often ranked in the top 5 highest-grossing apps for travel in the Apple App Store & won the Webby for Best Travel App. In addition, it has twice been featured as App of the Day by Apple.

Do you want Autio with you when you fly? Have you used Autio? Please share with civility in the comments.

Source: Travel + Leisure