After more than three decades in print, what has become a familiar and much-loved feature of every United Airlines flight will soon cease to exist as the Chicago-based carrier prepares to follow its rivals and discontinue the print version of its inflight magazine.
Known for regular and recurring features like ‘Three Perfect Days,’ which inspired passengers to do things in various destinations, United Airlines is preparing to wind down the print publication of its popular ‘Hemispheres’ magazine.
The magazine has been published since 1992 and has graced the seatbacks of United airplanes for nearly 32 years, with a host of features and articles designed to help passengers enjoy their time onboard.
Unfortunately, it now appears that United is set to copy rivals like American Airlines and Alaska Airlines, both of whom ditched their print copy inflight magazines in recent years.
Inflight magazines were already suffering from declining ad sales, as well as increased print costs, but the pandemic proved to be their final death knell when several airlines used the excuse that they had to discontinue publication to avoid potential infection between passengers fingering through their pages.
American Airlines ended publication of its iconic ‘American Way’ in 2021 after concluding that passengers no longer wanted to flick through the pages of a dog-eared magazine and would rather browse the internet or watch shows downloaded to their own devices.
Delta and Southwest also decided to retire their inflight magazines during the pandemic, as did British Airways, although the Heathrow-based carrier has retained an online version of its Highlife magazine, which can be read on a customer’s own device using onboard Wi-Fi.
That’s potentially what United has up its sleeves for Hemisphere’s, with a spokesperson telling ModernRetail magazine that it plans to create a digital experience aimed at making Hemispheres “even better”.
“We can reach a wider audience, offer more personalized content and tell richer stories,” the airline said in a statement. “We’ve even hired additional United staff to help us bring this new vision to life. We’re excited about the future possibilities and look forward to sharing more details soon.”
For now, the online version of Hemisphere’s magazine has already been taken offline and instead redirects to United’s main website – a process that only started earlier this month.
Interestingly, only two months ago, United announced that it had created its own digital media ad network called Kinective Media, which will sell advertising across the airline’s online ecosystem, including its website, mobile app and the 100,000 seatback screens that the airline boasts across its fleet.
United hopes that Kinective Media will convince advertisers to pay more for ad space because the airline has been gathering data on passenger behavior to create various anonymized audience segments so that advertisers can better target individual passengers.
What we may end up seeing is a digital version of Hemisphere’s magazine that will serve up highly personalized ads via the Kinective Media network – something that simply isn’t possible with a print magazine.
This isn’t, however, the first time that United has tinkered with Hemisphere’s – Several years ago, the airline switched to a slightly lighter type of paper which helped it 170,000 gallons of fuel a year – equivalent to around $290,000.
