Daniel Terdiman/CNET

Lufthansa, one of the world's largest airlines, will soon take advantage of onboard tech that sends in-flight entertainment directly to passengers' smartphones and tablets.

The company plans to have BroadConnect, an entertainment system developed by Lufthansa Systems, installed on 20 of its Airbus A321 aircraft by this summer. The system, which is actually a small server inside the plane along with several wireless access points, ties into onboard Wi-Fi and lets passengers stream in-flight movies on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices. In order to get the streaming entertainment, passengers need to download the app before their flight takes off.

According to Tech Radar, which earlier reported on the news, Virgin Australia Airlines already uses the technology on its flights. Other airlines, such as United and Southwest, also offer similar services that let passengers stream movies and TV shows to their devices on some flights.