Amazon Just Changed In-Flight Entertainment For the Better

Caroline Morse Teel is the Managing Editor for SmarterTravel Media. Follow her on Instagram @TravelWithCaroline.

Caroline joined Boston-based SmarterTravel in 2011 after living in Ireland, London, and Manhattan. She's traveled to all seven continents, jumped out of planes, and bungeed off bridges in the pursuit of a good story. She loves exploring off-the-beaten path destinations, anything outdoorsy, and all things adventure.

Her stories have also appeared online at USA Today, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Yahoo, Boston.com, TripAdvisor, Buzzfeed, Jetsetter, Oyster, Airfarewatchdog, and others.

The Handy Item I Always Pack: "Earplugs. A good pair has saved my sleep and sanity many times!"

Ultimate Bucket List Experience: Hiking Mount Kilimanjaro.

Travel Motto: "Don't be boring."

Aisle, Window, or Middle Seat: "Aisle (when the first class private suite isn't available)."

E-mail her at cteel@smartertravel.com.

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Ever been stuck on a plane with no in-flight entertainment (or worse, showing just one terrible movie on a loop), bored in the backseat of a car on a long road trip, or spent $20 a trip just to download enough entertainment to get you to your destination without going stir-crazy? Those days are over, thanks to Amazon’s major new announcement. Their Prime membership is already pretty great—it gives you (dangerously fast) free two-day shipping, unlimited movies and TV shows, unlimited music streaming, photo storage and access to over 800,000 free e-books.

The downside, however, was that you could only stream the movies and TV shows, which meant that you were out of luck if you weren’t somewhere with a good wi-fi connection, such as airports or on a train. Now, Amazon is letting Prime members save and stream moves and TV shows offline on their phones, tablets, or laptops. So all you have to do before a trip is load up on free content, and you can binge watch to your heart’s content, no matter where you travel.

An Amazon Prime membership is only $99 a year, which works out to just over $8 a month. We spend at least double that downloading entertainment for trips, so this will probably be what pushes us into actually buying a membership.

Want to try it out for yourself? Use this link to get a free 30-day Amazon Prime free trial membership.

Caroline Morse is a Senior Editor for SmarterTravel. Check out her travel photos and advice on Instagram @TravelWithCaroline and on Twitter @CarolineMorse1.

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