East/West Network rules the friendly skies of in-flight monthlies
You're strapped into an aisle seat on he 7 a.m. flight from LAX to ORD, and the baby next to you is screaming, and the turbulence is causing your stomach to bathe your just consumed sausage links and hash browns in acid, and you don't know how you're going to get through the next 4% hrs. because it's too early for a martini, and besides, you want to throw up. So you reach for that little paper bag in the seat-back pocket, and, hello! What's this? A slick, thick, technicolor magazine throbbing with lively articles on travel, finance, health, law, politics. You become so engrossed in a piece on the revitalized riverfront in SAT that you don't notice when the left wing . . .
In-flight magazines, those airline-sponsored throwaways, used to be as bland and insubstantial as inflight food. Now they are expensively produced, professionally edited and immensely prosperous. Ten leading airline monthlies last year carried advertising worth $20 million, or double the amount three years ago.
The pilot of those ten gravy planes and the man most responsible for the in-flight magazine industry's takeoff is Jeffrey S. Butler, 39. A onetime Pacific Southwest Airlines public relations director, Butler made a previous contribution to aviation history by outfitting PSA stewardesses in tangerine-colored hot pants. When PSA balked at his plan to put out an in-flight magazine, he formed East/West Network, Inc. Butler gradually picked up other clients, and today the Los Angeles-based firm publishes magazines for PSA, Allegheny, Continental, Eastern, Hughes Airwest, Ozark, Pan Am, Southern, Texas International and United.* East/West figures that last year a total of 10 million passengers read the magazines each month. Combined revenues were $20 million, and profits were about $2 million.
Until East/West came along, in-flight magazines were generally soporific collections of restaurant hosannas, travel columns and self-serving airline news. Says Butler: "Passengers felt cheated. They'd pick up a story about bananas, but by the third paragraph they'd be reading about how many bananas the airline carried in its cargo hold."