American Airlines Is Teaming up with Rosetta Stone and Skillshare to Offer Classes in the Sky

Hannah Chubb
·2 min read

Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty American Airlines plane

Boredom at 35,000 feet, be gone! American Airlines has announced a new initiative that will make your time in the sky so much more productive.

On Thursday, the airline revealed that they have exclusively partnered with language learning company Rosetta Stone and the online education platform Skillshare to give flyers the opportunity to learn a new language, take a photography class, practice writing or sketching and much more — all before reaching their destination.

Starting June 1, passengers on board any American Airlines flight will have access to more than 150 different creative, productivity and language classes as part of the airline's new Lifestyle inflight entertainment channel, which can be streamed for free on any phone, tablet or laptop.

The classes join the more than 600 movies and TV shows, concert recordings and meditations from Calm that are also available to stream on the channel.

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Rosetta Stone

"The importance of personal enrichment has grown over the past year, but so have the varying priorities competing for our attention," Clarissa Sebastian, Managing Director of Premium Customer Experience and Onboard Products at American Airlines, said in a press release. "We are thrilled to team up with Rosetta Stone and Skillshare to introduce new, interactive ways for our customers to spend their time with us."

Rosetta Stone, which has long been one of the most well-known companies for online language learning, will be adapting to the skies by offering a variety of bite-sized programs for passengers, so they can learn a local language as efficiently as possible.

Rosetta Stone

For example, guests can learn how to order a coffee in Spanish, how to greet someone in Italian, how to count to 100 in French and more in under 10 minutes. Other languages include German, Japanese and Chinese, and more offerings are being added in the coming months.

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Skillshare, which is "the largest online learning community for creativity," according to the press release, will connect passengers with classes that can get their creative juices flowing, and teach them a new hobby or skill.

Classes available on American flights will include "Sketchbook Illustration: Draw a Personal, Colorful Travel Map"; "Creative Writing Bootcamp: Start a Brand-New Story"; "Everyday Flowers: Simple, Stunning Arrangements for Any Occasion"; "Plants at Home: Uplift Your Spirit & Your Space" and "Travel Photography: Seeing, Shooting, and Editing."

While onboard, passengers can find the library of classes by enabling airplane mode and connecting to the "AA-Inflight" signal. From there, all entertainment can be accessed at aainflight.com.