Airliners.net
| File:AirlinersNetMainPage2July06.jpg Airliners.net Homepage | |
| Revenue | Forum Memberships, Advertising |
|---|---|
| URL | http://www.airliners.net/ googlybooglyboogly |
n acquired by Demand Media, a company based in Santa Monica, CA, USA.[1] The site has recently been moved from Sweden to Demand Media's servers in the USA. Many technical problems have come up due to the server migration, causing the site's stability to decrease drastically.
The site features a large photo database, discussion forums, a chat room, and an aircraft history and information section. It claims to be the world's largest aviation website with over three million page views from 200,000 individuals daily.[2]
Features
Photos
The photo database contains over one million photographs of aircraft (the million-photo milestone was reached in May 2006), with accompanying information about the aircraft featured in the photographs. The database may be searched by many parameters, including aircraft registration, line number, location, type of photo, airline and photographer. To ensure the high quality of photographs in the database, photos are screened by photo screeners prior to being accepted. Photos can be commented on, rated, and purchased by visitors.
Discussions
The discussion forums are divided into separate sections, such as Civil Aviation, Military Aviation and Space, and Technical/Operations. As of April 2007 there are over 50,000 members, and the Civil Aviation forum has passed 3 million posts. Forum moderators volunteer their time to monitor and manage these forums. In addition to the discussion forums, members have access to a chat room which is managed by chat operators. New users must pay either a one-time $25USD fee to join the discussion forums, or join as a "First Class" member for $5 per month, which provides additional features, such as full screen photos and ad-free browsing. If users decide to cancel a first class membership account, Airliners automatically holds the account name so that if, at a later date, the user wishes to rejoin Airliners.net, the account and posts will remain intact.
In addition to the photo database and discussion forums, the website accepts aviation articles for publishing, has an automatic news service which gathers aviation news from sources around the world, maintains an information database about many aircraft types (based on The International Directory of Civil Aircraft by Gerard Frawley), and hosts a flight and hotel booking service.
Sale to Demand Media
Demand Media is currently in the process of moving the servers from Sweden to California, USA. Individuals visiting the website may encounter frequent server errors.
Affiliated Websites
Airliners.net has a sister website, MyAviation.net, which accepts all photos and was started to cater for photos which do not pass the quality standards of Airliners.net's database. Other sister websites of similar design are Cardatabase.net and Modified Airliner Photos, which feature photographs of automobiles and modified or Photoshopped images of airliners, respectively.
Member Meetings
Members of Airliners.net often organize meetings in different airports all over the world. Sites of large meetings have included Amsterdam, Manchester, Madrid/Las Palmas, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Toronto. In some meetings, people focus only on photography and spotting, but others such as Zürich included organized tours of the airport. Additionally, several 'Experience meets' have been held, during which the primary aim is not necessarily aviation, but instead to enjoy the location, it's scenery and other attractions. So far these meetings have been held in Svalbard and Reykjavík, with the next being held in Kiev/Chernobyl.
References
- ^ Big News On The Future Of Airliners.net
- ^ "About Airliners.net". Retrieved 2006-06-05.
External links
 |
- Airliners.net web site
- Rothfischer, Brigitte (February 2005). "Best of Airliners.net" (PDF Reprint). AERO International (in German). Retrieved 2006-12-27.
- Example of an Airliners.net meeting