Airliners.net Homepage (Post-2008 design) |
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| URL | Airliners.net |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Aircraft Photo Archive & Database |
| Owner | Demand Media |
| Created by | Johan Lundgren |
| Launched | September 1, 1997 |
| Revenue | Forum Memberships, Advertising |
| Current status | Active |
Airliners.net is an aviation website founded by Johan Lundgren, of Sweden, in 1997, evolving from his previous Pictures of Modern Airliners site started in 1994. On 27 July 2007, it was announced that Airliners.net had been acquired by Demand Media, a company based in Santa Monica, California, United States.[1]
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]
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Airliners.net was created by Johan Lundgren in 1994, as an airliner database known as Pictures of Modern Airlines. In the year 1997, Pictures of Modern Airliners morphed into Airliners.net, an aviation photo database and forum website. In 2008, Airliners.net logged 80 million page views from 900,000 distinct viewers.[3] In 2009, it remained one of the top aviation websites on the Internet today.
On May 29, 2008, the site was redesigned by Demand Media. This was the first major redesign since the site's inception. Elements of the new design included a modified home page layout, and the ability to select the color of the background of any page in the site.
The photo database contains 1,903,622 (as of April 18, 2011) 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 keywords 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.
The discussion forums are divided into sections, such as Civil Aviation, Military Aviation and Space, Technical/Operations, Aviation Photography, Photography Feedback, Aviation Hobbies, Non-aviation, and Site Related.[4] As of April 2011 there are over 133,140 members,[4] and the Civil Aviation forum has passed 4 million posts.[4] The total post count for all the forums as of December 2010 is 8,351,802. 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,[5] as well as a @vip.airliners.net email address. If users decide to cancel a first class membership account, the site 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. There is also an option to pay a one-time fee of $999 for "lifetime" membership, which expires in the year 2100.
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, maintains an information database about aircraft types (based on The International Directory of Civil Aircraft by Gerard Frawley).
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. Another sister website is FlightLevel350.com, showcasing aviation videos.
Members of Airliners.net organize meetings in airports worldwide. Meetings have been held in Amsterdam, Atlanta, Barcelona, Caracas, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Manchester (Held annually in early summer), London Heathrow, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Mumbai, Tehran, Toronto and Zurich. During some of these meetings people focus only on photography and spotting although the Zürich meet included organized behind the scenes tours of the airport operations.
Some meetings have been arranged with the purpose of, or in conjunction with, taking a flight on a specific airline or aircraft. Additionally, several 'Experience Meets' have been held, during which the focus is not necessarily on aviation, but instead to enjoy the location, its scenery and other attractions.