Before 19^th century, human mainly traveled by sea, followed by railway and road, and then there was the grown of aviation industry after the WWII. In the beginning, technology is not as developed, it’s no doubt that people’s focus was never on inflight entertainment such as movie or game channels onboard. Reading inflight magazine was once the best choice to kill time during long journey. Over all these years, airlines have published some classic, masterpiece of their own, some even recreate a “vintage issue” during anniversary celebration. From these vintage covers of inflight magazines, we can review the stylish trend and aesthetic sense in last era.

Freddie Laker’s Skylines Magazine as Laker Airways’ inflight magazine, it showed the typical cover for such magazines – the elements of blue skyline and airplane, and the contents included cover story, celebrity features, duty free shopping, flight information and more. This British airline was found in 1966 by Sir Freddie Laker, however, it went bankrupt in 1982 because of the recession of the early 1980s. One thing should be mentioned that Laker Airways was one of the pioneers in low-fare flight operation between UK and USA, and its “no-frills” airline business model was very successful which proved to Southwest Airlines, Ryanair, easyJet, AirAsia, WestJet and Virgin Australia.

Britannia Airways as another airline company main bases in UK, its inflight magazine also was a typical design during 1970-80s. Subsequently, it separated two publications – inflight magazine “Skyscene” and inflight shopping catalogue “Skystore” from 1990s until it ceased operations in 2005.

Virgin Airlines inflight magazine “Carlos” with its illustration design that set out to break the typical model of inflight magazines – stylish, impression, texture and retro, which was loved by other editors and designers even won the BSME (British Society of Magazine Editors) Awards. This thought of itself as more of a fanzine than an inflight magazine and only launched for Virgin Airlines’ business and first class passengers.

Australian airline Qantas nicknamed as “The Flying Kangaroo” was established in 1921 and over 90 years until now. Its inflight magazine “Airways” began in 1935 and started to be a regular inflight item in 1947 which was claimed as the world’s first inflight magazine by Qantas. Here are some vintage Airways covers during 1947 to 1964, successfully combine with Australian characteristic and commercial sense for the airline.

One more inflight magazine “high life” from British Airways, here are some vintage covers from 1975 to 2004 which presented the change of fashion and aesthetic sense. In 2004, Daisy Lowe as a cover model dressed in a 1973 British Airways uniform with retro style to celebrate High life’s 40th anniversary.

Another interesting knowledge about British Airways that is BOAC (British Overseas Airway Corporation) was merged with British European Airways to form British Airways in 1974. And here is BOAC’s inflight magazine during 1970s like that: