This story has a random subject, so why not go with a random photo of #A380cat?
Sometimes I put in silly working titles and plan to change them later. For this one, I am just going to keep it, why not? It has been too long since we did a little loving promotional update on AirlineReporter. What does that mean? Well, a number of things…
First off, I am VERY excited to announced that we have now traveled more than 2,000,000 miles to share our experiences and stories with you. That is equal to going around the world over 80 times, going to the moon AND back over four times, or my least favorite: a diagcon 737 flight from Seattle to Florida 734 times (ugh).
This is our 2,838th story published, so that is an average of about 700 miles per story. Of course this story is taking me zero miles, and the story that put us over the 2 million mark (My Rwanda Trip Provided Some Amazing AvGeek Experiences — which you should read, if you haven’t), took about 15,500 miles, so it all evens out.
We have now flown over 2,000,000 miles to bring you stories. Kinda almost to ever continent. Antarctica was a special flight down there, but didn’t land – Image: GCMap.com
With this whole COVID stuff, we have gained some new readers, so I thought it would be good to make a quick introduction:
We are the Home of the AvGeek, with over 35 writers, in 25 cities, on four continents sharing our passion for aviation and airlines since 2008. This site and the mission has changed quite a bit over the years. It started as a one man show (that is me), not knowing what he was doing; to a business with daily content and a stressful workload; to now being a rad hobby where people can come together and share their love of airlines. Everyone is welcome to share their passion in a number of ways. It can mean just reading our stories, following us on social media, starting a conversation in the comments (we really love those by the way), or even publishing a story on AirlineReporter.
I want you to be able to easily connect to our content in a way that makes sense to you:
- New story notifications: It is called a “newsletter,” but really you will get an email any time we publish a new story. This is the best way to make sure you do not miss anything, and I promise no spam.
- Twitter: We share news, photos, contests, and have fun with our fans. We have almost 114,000 followers, so we must be doing something right? Maybe? Hopefully.
- Facebook: Keep up with our stories, share them (please and thanks) and interact with our other readers.
- Instagram: When you just want the photos, this is the place to go! You will often see photos that we don’t share on any other channel here.
- YouTube: We often upload our videos from our stories and other videos as well. Plus, you can easily travel back in time and see some great “modern classic” videos.
- Flickr: Our Flickr page is also another good place to view more photos that don’t always show up in our stories.
- Our new c(AR)rier pigeon™ program: For an extra service charge, we will send you all our stories monthly via a carrier pigeon. You must live with-in 600 miles of Seattle and be willing to put down a $500 deposit incase the bird gets lost (this is a joke, but homing pigeons are quite fascinating).
Of course I love flying around and writing up stories, but no joke (and I am going to get sappy here), it’s the people that make it all worth it. So thank you for reading and being a part of the greater AvGeek community! Cheers and stay safe.
The old website… gone forever. See ya!
YES! Our website redesign has arrived, sorry it took so long, but I think it was worth the wait.
We now offer a new look that is not only fresh, techie, and clean, but it also is mobile friendly — something that has been the #1 requested update. We started the upgrade on Sept 9th and things are pretty well set at this point, but design is always an evolving process.
We have also recently updated the way our comments are handled and I think it is really cool. You get emailed a reply to your comment and you don’t have to come back to the site (you still can, if you want), just hit reply to the email, hit send, and the comment will be added to the story.
Some of the fun had this year
A new year always gives us a chance to step back and see what we enjoyed in the previous year, how much we have grown and changed, and what we look forward to in the new year.
I have to say that I am so proud of what our team has been able to do in 2014. We have become a true team of dedicated folks who love to share our passion for aviation and airlines. We also love how the AirlineReporter family has grown (that includes you, amazing readers). We have been given bigger and better opportunities and we couldn’t do it without our readers supporting what we do!
Let’s take a look at our numbers. We had our best month ever in 2014, with hitting a half-million visitors in a month. Man, I remembered how excited I was when we got 5,000. We also surpassed 50,000 Twitter followers and are getting close to 55,000. We have over 6.3 million views on our Flickr page, 2.2 million views of our YouTube videos, over 3,400 Facebook fans, and we recently started our Instagram account (and could use a bit more love there).
Many miles flown by our team to cover stories – Image: gcmap.com
Our team flew over 360,000 miles in 2014, which is about 30,000 miles more than 2013. We once again didn’t make it to Africa (we did in 2012), so that is a big goal for us in 2015. Since the site was started in 2009, we have flown over 921,600 miles. That means that in early 2015, we should hit the 1 million mile mark, which is very exciting (if anyone cares, we flew about 91,000 miles in 2012; 81,000 in 2011; 50,000 in 2010; and only 5,000 in 2009).
So let’s take a look at some of the highlights of this past year…
Singapore
Hello AvGeeks!
We thank those of you who keep reading, interacting, and supporting all of us at AirlineReporter. As most of you, know we are more than just a website, but use different forms of social media as ways for you to connect, learn, and enjoy more.
Since we have added some new things in the past few weeks, we wanted to remind you of our other sources and ask that you add/follow us! Here they are:
Thanks for your support!
So happy and proud to hit over 50,000 followers — thank you!
I don’t just want to go about tooting our own horn here, but I have to admit that I am pretty darn excited that we hit a big benchmark this morning: obtaining over 50,000 Twitter followers.
I remember way back in the day being super excited about hitting 5,000 and thinking that we would likely settle there. But a huge thank you to all of our fans and readers for making us relevant! The power of having so many fans is that airlines, folks in aviation, and others take notice and give us access to some pretty cool experiences, which we share with you every day.
How cute – our first Tweet – made when our name was different
We started on Twitter back in May of 2009. Not really an early adopter, but not late to the game either. Most airlines were not yet on Twitter, and neither were Boeing nor Airbus. I remember being hesitant because I really didn’t get the concept, but people kept telling me that I had to be on it. Now it is a key place where we get our information and leads for stories and it is the go-to source for breaking news.
For a long time, I was @AirlineReporter – it was my personal Twitter account and also the one for the brand. As the AirlineReporter team grew, it didn’t make much sense to use it personally, and I broke off with using @ARdpb for my personal stuff (although it is still 95% airplane-related) and keeping @AirlineReporter for the brand.
Getting to this point has been a big team effort. Not just our amazing writers who are producing the content, but others like @NYCAviation, @AirwaysNews, @RunwayGirl, @JonOstrower, @AirlineFlyer and many more on Twitter who have been following, supporting, and sharing our Tweets for years.
If you aren’t one of the cool kids already, be sure to follow us on Twitter (while you are at it, you might as well like us on Facebook too).
We will try to keep on growing and welcoming new readers, while still staying loyal to who we are and respecting the fans who have been with us for years.
Tell me – when did you start following us?
