I went to my grandfather's 95th birthday in Cincinnati. For 22 hours in Ohio I paid 15 hours of travel time.
I had a chance to read both of the delta airline in-flight magazines and the alaska airline magazine. I find that with proper reading they are a powerful indicator of where we are as a society.
Like all things in the airline industry the magazines are targeted at the business traveler.
Advertisements in the in flight magazine are targeted at the working wealthy.
Like many things if you aren't the consumer, you are the product. Looking at the faces of the smiling professional models in the ads it's fun to see how well this matches up.
In the advertisement for an elder care community the inter-generational hug is remarkably cold. The ad is targeted at the younger, and the stiffly smiling elder is the product.
An advertisement about fast marine freight to Alaska speaks about industry working in the wilderness with an inadequate supply of spare parts.
The glossy renderings of repriced unsold new condominiums in downtown Seattle mean that the housing market hasn't bottomed out yet.
Skymall operates on high profit-margin items. To be a successful product a product either needs to be rapidly increasing in popularity, or rapidly decreasing in cost. And there are examples of each in the skymall.
Personalization is a big thing. There are jigsaw puzzles of hometown maps. There are names and personal words in artwork.
Tools for the care of elderly pets are also big in Skymall.
Cameras and projectors are everywhere, and are getting small and cheap. Hidden cameras seem to be a big trend.
The original formulation of Moore's Law talked about the density at minimum cost per transistor.
I feel that Skymall is something similar, something like novelty at maximum profit margin.
I regularly feel the need to check in on the world through the in-flight magazines.
