Mile-high reading: Wizz Air's in-flight magazine reviewed

Forgot to bring the latest Dan Brown book with you on the plane? Already seen all the in-flight films? Time to look in the seat pocket in front for some light reading. We're reviewing the in-flight magazines from all the main airlines that fly to the UK, so you'll know which ones are worth a look. The good news: they're almost all substantially better than a certain blockbuster about Opus Dei and the descendants of Christ.

Wizzit is Wizz Air's in-flight mag: a trilingual, handbag-sized glossy. Unlike many other airlines' magazines, it doesn't include celebrity interviews, fashion, vox-pops or events calendars. Instead, the magazine contains many (excellent) articles focused around Wizz Air destinations.

The Spring issue (February to April) had a Valentine's Day tie-in with a quick rundown on the most romantic Wizz Air destinations (Wroclaw and Krakow put in an appearance alongside the more obvious Paris and Rome); a mouth-watering article about Hungarian goulash; a run-down of Sofia; and an article by Duncan Rhodes about the Post and Telecommunications Museum in Wroclaw with one of the best introductions ever seen in an in-flight mag:

"I was already bored and I hadn't even arrived yet. Why couldn't Wroclaw have a famous war museum, packed full of sleek fighter planes, shiny machine guns and long-range homing missiles? Or, better still, Poland's largest collection of erotica?"

(Guess what, he loved the museum in the end.)

All stories are in English, Polish and Hungarian, though the non-English readers get a worse deal with the long stories, when translations follow the illustrated English language version, appearing a bit of an after-thought. The layout and design is clean and uncluttered, even despite the small size, though the overuse of the Wizz Air pinky-purple colour is a bit much for the eyes after a while.

The obligatory city guides take up the large majority of the magazine (pages 54-120). They cover food, drinks, shopping, nightlife, exhibitions taking place in the cities and a translation of how to say "I want that one" in the local language (a Little Britain joke? We weren't sure...) But here, the need to translate everything into three languages means that there is little space to provide information. Instead of using words, lots of detail has been depicted by symbols, which weren't always clear. Instead of writing "The average cost of a meal for two", for example, there is a picture of some cutlery and a glass, with "x2" written alongside. At first glance, the symbol for nightlife (a pink circle with some stars glittering in it) was mistaken for a picture of a tomato. Somewhat confusing.

Though full of information that is eminently practical and useful, it is a shame this section takes up so much space. The quality of writing in the main part is really excellent, far superior to most other magazines in this field, and I could have happily read more. Depending on the length of your flight, there might not be enough in here to keep you occupied the whole way. What you do read, though, is guaranteed to impress.

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Mile-high reading: in-flight magazines reviewed

© Cheapflights Ltd Sabrina Wolfe