Mile-high reading: bmibaby’s in-flight magazine reviewed
© bmibabyYeahbaby is a classy magazine — from its Austin Powers inspired title, good quality paper, well-designed pages, celebrity interviews, even to the adverts (the May issue has a full page ad for the Royal Shakespeare Company. It doesn't get much more upmarket than that). Which makes it even more of a shame that the first thing you see when you open the magazine is a letter from the marketing director.
I’m sure that bmibaby does want to tell me about the huge amount of new routes it has, the gigantic number of passengers flying with bmibaby last month, the fact that it's the only low-cost airline to allow infants to travel for free. But I don’t want to read all of that PR info on the first page of the magazine, when I have already booked a flight with the airline and am sitting on the plane.
There was a time when all in-flight magazines were little more than a PR brochure for the airline, and nearly every one started with a message from the managing director or CEO. But in-flight entertainment has become more sophisticated since then (see the first article in this series: Mile-high reading: in-flight magazines reviewed) and we expect something more consumer focused. Something similar to the kind of magazine we would choose to buy in a shop. Why has bmibaby left this corporate message in what is, otherwise, just such a magazine?
However, turning the page, the rest of the magazine has just the right mix of information, articles, interviews and destination guides to keep anyone amused on a short-haul flight. It begins with a nicely presented Events Calendar with weird and wonderful things to do at bmibaby destinations over the next couple of months. Regular features include a fashion page Shop Til You Drop, a sports page On the Go and travel advice articles: June's article Parents vs Teenagers is about how to survive the family holiday and gives tips to both the "moody, lazy and ungrateful" teenagers and their parents, otherwise known as "embarrassing dictatorial monsters hell-bent on destroying their happiness, curbing their independence and, oh, dragging them round National Trust properties."
The main bulk of the magazine comprises destination based articles. These are expertly done, and offer very interesting and unique information about the destinations. June's Destination Prague, for example, details films that have been set in Prague over the years; Destination Newquay, from the May edition, talks to Jamie Oliver about the seaside town in which he has just opened his latest restaurant Fifteen Cornwall.
Yeahbaby has just been made available online so you can read issues from the April / May of this year onwards. They're well worth a look even if you're not on the plane and, reading the online version, you can easily bypass that letter from the Marketing Director…
© Cheapflights Ltd Sabrina Wolfe
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