You’ve reached cruising altitude; time to recline, sip a cocktail and flip through that glossy inflight magazine. Folding down a couple of pages that are relevant to your own work or life, you make sure you tuck the magazine into your carry-on before you disembark.
Except that on some flights, you can’t.
According to this article in ITWire, “Brisbane-based publisher, Inflight Publishing, has teamed up with digital publishing startup, Liquid State, in a deal which the two companies say will give airline passengers a new kind of inflight entertainment with a fleet of custom-made tablets.”
While the idea may encourage more immediate engagement during flight, we see some pretty big downfalls to the idea. The biggest problem in our eyes: You can’t take it with you.
The portable nature of the printed magazine makes the inflight mag a popular choice for advertisers. They know those pieces will be picked up, moved about and get seen in lots of places, from airport lounges to coffee shops across the world.
According to the story, the tablet mags are so far only being offered on charter flights that typically serve 30 people or less, on five airlines.
While the idea of having a digital version to complement the printed magazine makes sense (you can engage a new generation of readers that normally wouldn’t glance at the inflight magazine), cutting out the printed edition seems like a huge waste of potential eyeballs.
We’ll take ours to go, thanks!
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