WestJet Flight Light, keeping children and travelling parents connected

While their parents are away, children tend to count down the days and hours until their return. The WestJet Flight Light keeps them close to their parents’ journey in an enchanting way, by projecting their flight progression through a starry sky onto their bedroom ceiling.

The Flight Light is a comforting nightlight toy that helps children and parents stay connected in real time. The idea builds on the childhood wonder that comes from seeing a plane flying across the sky, and uses live flight data to track travelling parents as they journey home to their children. The celestial projection can be accompanied by bedtime messages and emojis from the parents, sent live through the Flight Light mobile app.

The brief

Many parents need to travel regularly for work, but being away from their families never gets easier. WestJet takes great care to meet all of their guests’ needs, and this extends to the people they leave behind at home. We therefore began this collaboration with WestJet and Rethink Canada by posing the design question:

“How can we help business travellers continue to pursue their work opportunities away from home, whilst maintaining a loving connection to their children who are waiting for them?”

The product

Nightlight

The Flight Light’s core function is as a comforting nightlight. The base, designed to resemble aircraft wings, glows peacefully next to the child while they sleep, and the nightlight will pulse when the parents’ flight takes off, lands, or when the parent sends a message via the Flight Light app.

Projection

The Flight Light projects a starry sky onto the child’s bedroom ceiling. When the parent is in the air, a plane will move across the sky in real time, harnessing live flight data to count down the hours until they land.

Torch

Resting on the wings of the nightlight, a removable torch is designed to look like the fuselage of the plane. Instead of the usual torchlight, it projects the outline of a WestJet plane. When the torch is removed from the base, the projector automatically goes into “play mode”, encouraging the child to move the torch’s plane over a series of games projected on the ceiling.

Connection

The Flight Light is connected to the parents’ phone via the mobile app, which pulls in flight data from the WestJet API to enable the child to watch the parents’ journey. Through the app, the parents can also send messages and emojis directly to the light, to be projected onto their child’s ceiling at the push of a button.