Editorial comment
In October, the Columbia Journalism Review published an article called: ‘The Final Flight of the Airline Magazine’, about the demise of United Airlines’ in-flight publication. Hemispheres has now gone digital, marking the end of an era for Star Alliance travellers and their non-points-collecting counterparts.
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The airline could do without the extra weight of the printed magazine onboard, and that’s before you consider how the wide availability of in-cabin WiFi, sophisticated personal devices, myriad seat-back entertainment options, and a general post-COVID-19 hesitance to touch public surfaces and materials, have all contributed to the fate of the printed airline magazine.
Hemispheres, the last to fold of the printed magazines of the major US carriers, now resides online, offering a digital experience that can encompass translations in eight languages, and the option to enlarge text for easier reading.
As passengers, we strap ourselves in and must choose how to spend our time from a finite set of options. Despite recent press attention on an interesting subset of people who pride themselves on doing nothing but stare at the back of the seat in front for the duration of a flight (as some sort of mental challenge, I gather), most of us pass the time in more conventional ways.
I can see how it might be harder than ever to capture (and keep) the attention of passengers on a plane. When I think back on my own recent flight activity, I have made friends with my seatmate, read a book, watched downloaded Netflix shows on my tablet, and scrolled TikTok (tip: before you fly, you can pre-download up to 200 TikTok videos to watch without data, just navigate to ‘Offline videos’ in Settings), but I have not once reached for any airline-provided publications.
The onboard environment clearly lends itself to engagement with printed materials, but the titles must work hard to earn that attention. At the centre of everything we do at World Pipelines, is the belief that pipeline professionals seek highly curated and relevant content to enhance their work. Even though our readers are not physically captive like the passengers on a plane, their professional roles make them highly invested in finding content that supports their work and decision-making.
The most engaged audiences are those who feel they are part of a conversation, not just passive recipients of information. We recently celebrated gaining over 10 000 members for our World Pipelines LinkedIn group: by creating space for informed communities to share insights, foster innovation, and address sector-wide challenges such as sustainability and regulatory pressures, we help push the sector forward. And we strive to publish content that resonates with your needs, ambitions, and challenges. In this issue, we offer insight into: Argentina’s burgeoning midstream sector; the current threat level for cyberattacks on pipelines; key regulatory challenges for hydrogen pipeline safety; and case studies describing flare gas monitoring at compressor stations, understanding volumetric metal loss at girth welds, and ROVs for targeted inspections of midstream assets.
Wishing you a happy holiday season. Join us in 2025 for 14 issues of the magazine, webinars, interviews, the World Pipelines podcast, and more. And we don’t mind if you read the magazine (in print, or digitally) on the plane!
1. https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/final-flight-airline-magazine-united-digital.php
