In-flights Take Off

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Dec 1, 2002

Byline: JOE MANDESE

When hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last year, one of the immediate and obvious victims of that awful day was the whole of the U.S. airline industry. Fourteen months later, at least one component of that vast industry is showing remarkable - and surprising - growth: in-flight magazines have emerged as a hot category.

The total reader base of the seven in-flight magazines measured by Mediamark Research, Inc. increased 5.2 percent to 13.986 million adults in MRI's fall 2002 readership study. That makes the airline magazines the fastest-growing readership category over the past year, behind only the blazing men's category, which was up 8.3 percent from fall 2001.

The findings are only one of the seemingly counterintuitive developments to emerge from the new MRI numbers, which will be used by advertisers and agencies to plan their media buys for the next six months.

Other paradoxical findings include a healthy 1.1 percent growth in the readership of travel magazines, which is nearly three times the rate of growth of magazine readership overall. MRI estimates the total readership base of the consumer magazines it measures rose 0.4 percent to 1.519 billion over the period studied.

The findings are odd because, not surprisingly, several studies of consumer lifestyles and attitudes post-September 11 have concluded that Americans are currently less likely to travel and more likely to be focused on their homes and families. That may explain why epicurean titles were the third-fastest growing category - up 4.5 percent in readers - but it does not explain why the readership of shelter books fell 1.1 percent. How to explain these seemingly oddball results? MRI says the numbers speak for themselves. "We don't necessarily say why things are the way they are. We just say they are what they are," says Anne Marie Kelly, vice president of marketing and strategic planning at MRI.

WHERE THE READERS ARE (BY CATEGORY)

However, MRI does note that the in-flight magazine category has been trending upward on a long-term basis, growing 35 percent over the past five years. The category's increase since fall 2001 reflects organic growth for the same seven titles each year: Attache, Continental Profiles, American Way, Delta Sky, Hemispheres, Northwest World Traveler, and Southwest Spirit.

With the exception of United's Hemispheres, which declined 2.6 percent, the readership of all in-flight magazines grew. In fact, American Airlines' American Way was the fastest-growing magazine in the category, with a year-over-year readership boost of 10.3 percent.

One outside observer suggests that at least one contributor to the in-flight readership surge may be other changes that took place in air travel since September 11. "With all of the added security measures and the longer wait times that travelers are experiencing, they probably have more time to read," observes Rebecca McPheters, president of McPheters & Co., which has been conducting an ongoing study of consumer attitudes and media-usage patterns in the wake of the attacks. Perhaps. But we still find the MRI figures, well, let's just say unexpected.