Safi Airlines’ in-flight magazine tells it like it is. Not for Kabul’s start-up airline is the rose-tinted journalism of the traditional in-flight magazine: Safi’s reading material typically includes the likes of “an article on Kabul heroin addicts, photos of bullet-pocked tourist sites and ads for mine-resistant sport-utility vehicles”.
Says Christian Marks, the magazine’s cheerfully blunt German editor: “I would like it to be a magazine where you can read interesting things, not just get brainwashed by some marketing agency that says you can’t show problems.”
And Marks’ is a truly warts’n’all approach, as the magazine’s hotel guide shows:
The rooms are individually air-conditioned, accessorised with amenities you will find in 4-star hotels abroad, sheets are clean, view from the room is nice, and – after the suicide bombing that took place – security measures have been implemented.