Details on major changes coming soon
In two months, with the May cover date, we’ll be launching the new Plane & Pilot. In that premier issue, just about everything about the magazine will have changed, while, somewhat paradoxically, all the important things will remain the same.
The new magazine will feature award-winning authors, illustrators, and columnists, and there will be brand- new spaces designed to entertain and enlighten. I won’t spill the beans about the details quite yet—there will be big surprises—but I’ll characterize the kind of experience you’ll be getting.
The essential nature of Plane & Pilot won’t be changing. We’ve always been a brand that focuses on the flying experience, as seen from the left seat—okay, or the right seat, if you fly helicopters, or the back seat, if you fly J-3s, or, sigh, the front seat if you fly a T-6. But you get the idea. Plane & Pilot is about pilots and the aircraft we fly and own.
How we approach the brand, however, will change, as will our assumptions about you. We’ll strive for excellence in everything we do and hope we hit the numbers a lot more often than not. We’ll aim not just for great content, but to challenge you with that content, as well. We want you to come away from an issue of Plane & Pilot or a story on planeandpilotmag.com or an eNewsletter with the sense that you’ve seen something new, learned something you didn’t know before you cracked it open or laughed a laugh you didn’t know you had coming about how funny flying and life can sometimes be. Even when we miss by a little, or by a lot, it won’t be for failure to take chances or push our limits, or yours.
Nothing aviation is off-topic for us, but I will say unapologetically that we know who we are, and we know who you are. Flying is fun, and sharing the fun is a huge part of how we all communicate these days, on Facebook, through Twitter (What, more than 140 characters? Say it ain’t so!) and with pictures and videos of airplanes on every channel from YouTube to Instagram. At the same time, we’ll never forget that it’s about two things—planes and pilots—and that stories about a big order of double-decker planes from a giant airline isn’t what we’re all about, though I do want to know what it’s like to fly that latest super jumbo. We want to write about the flying part, and that’s what you want to read about, too. For details of the financial agreements involved in the new mega order of Airbus jumbos from a large Middle Eastern carrier, we’d suggest you try some other journal. This is about the flying.
(For the full text of this article, see the March issue of Plane & Pilot.)
Now that Robert Goyer has taken the left seat I am going to renew my subscription.
Just bring back Gordon Baxter!