The Global Passenger Survey, the world's largest airline passenger survey of over 40 airlines, uncovered insights into a range of passenger behaviour and opinion, including how passengers engage with their inflight magazine. Given the size and range of the survey, these media insights make GPS effectively the largest inflight media survey of its kind.

Within the media section of the survey, airline passengers were asked to score the editorial content that they like to read in inflight magazines. Destination features consistently scored No.1 in terms of editorial engagement with passengers across all airlines surveyed, proving the relevance of inflight magazines as a natural source of inspiration and information for travel and tourism features.

Consistent across all airlines is the second-highest score for reading Route Maps which were revealed as a source of high interest amongst all airline respondents, despite their usual position in the second-half of the magazine.  This position has been seen to have benefits for advertising and editorial placed in this section – with some magazines favouring this previously unknown premium position near the maps for dedicated Business sections and advertising.

Entertainment Guides in 3rd place are seen as a key source of local information for passengers, showcasing tourist attractions, culture and music, with Food Reviews focussing on destination-based restaurants.  These two editorial sections play an important role in developing the economies of the destinations that magazines' airlines, indirectly support through airport investment.
Business-traveller respondents in the EU Full-service group scored Hotel Reviews higher than the general result (73%), as features and advertising are particularly relevant to this traveller segment, relying on editorial recommendation for last minute hotel booking.  Indeed, 2% of passengers of a single North American airline stated they do not book any city-break accommodation at all until arriving at their destination!

The survey found this high engagement with editorial content to translate into action, with 31% of readers having sourced a holiday they had seen in the magazine.  And as up to 66% of passengers on some airlines say they plan their next trip whilst travelling, high interest in tourism continues to drive readership of inflight magazines, with 97% of passengers reading the magazine in the last 12 months.