Tray Table Ads Coming Soon to an Airline Near You

Just as soon as we think advertising has reached the final frontier of saturation, America West now offers tray table advertising. Now with you uncomfortable seat on the flight, you can now be exposed to yet another ad from yet another company you will probably never buy anything from.

America West has sold advertising, which will begin to appear December 15, on its entire fleet of 142 planes to advertisers such as Visa, Mercedes-Benz, The History Channel and Bank of America. Executives say selling ads will help keep fares low. I say take it further. Plaster the entire interior and exterior of the plane and make marketers pay for airfare as they do for television programming. For free airfare, most people would put up with it. Sadly, that will never happen. Airlines will simply keep fares the same and still allow advertising to creep onto other areas of the plane. As an advertiser, I love it. As a consumer, I hate it.

Written by Steve Hall    Comments (2)     File: Inflight     Dec-10-03