For years, it was something of a ritual. You had made it through airport security, survived the lengthy delays and even crammed your carry-on into an overhead bin. Then you could settle in, buckle up and reach into the seat-back pocket in front of you. There, pressed up against the motion-sickness bag or the laminated emergency instruction card, you would find the latest edition of SkyMall.
It was the National Enquirer of shopping catalogs. Thumbing through its pages — on the tarmac before takeoff or at 35,000 feet — you would find products that seemed too weird to be true: An indoor pet-relief system called “Piddle Place,” a helmet that promised to regrow your hair using lasers, a glass Christmas tree ornament designed to look like a pierogi, a solar-powered cooling hat.
But this great American aviation tradition may now be over. SkyMall’s parent company, Xhibit, has filed for bankruptcy protection.
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“I’m hopeful that Chapter 11 will shed a lot of the baggage,” Mr. Worsley said. “And that there will be the resurgence of a new and improved and more kind of with-it SkyMall.”
Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on January 24, 2015, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: It All Seemed So Cool at Six Miles High. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
