In-flight magazines may slowly be heading down the same path as free airline meals and checking your luggage for free.  In its place? Say hello to the cooler, new kid on the block: in-flight Wi-Fi entertainment.

For now, in-flight Wi-Fi offers airline passengers Internet and e-mail access, but according to a recent NY Times article, airlines are looking at using Wi-Fi for enhanced in-flight entertainment.

As a traveler who frequents the 3 1/2 hour flight to Minneapolis, this was great news! In another sense, the decline of in-flight magazines was bad news to me as PR professional for  a creative agency.  Securing a hit in an in-flight magazine is like gold for publicists. Think about their monthly readership.  Millions. Not to mention many are business travelers (think affluent audience), and the fact you have a built-in, dedicated audience for at least half an hour, usually longer.

So with more exciting options like Wi-Fi on airplanes, I think in-flight magazines are destined to lose their prestige, in print form anyway. There may be a chance we’ll be reading our in-flight magazines on a fancy panel on the seatback in front of us. What do you think?