The new FLYING magazine is about to hit subscriber mailboxes. We have been working on the redesign and relaunch of the printed magazine for the past six months. The goal has been to create the finest aviation magazine, anywhere. This past weekend, I received an advanced copy of the latest issue and I was blown away by the quality of the new version.
The magazine uses the highest quality paper on the market, along with ink that has far more color depth than anything I’ve ever seen. It now has a weight that gives the magazine an essence of significance and a level of sophistication that is coffee-table friendly for even the most refined taste.
The new magazine now contains a lot more content than before. For the past couple of years, the previous version typically contained 70 pages inside the covers, and the new version has 112 pages. But since the paper and covers are thicker, the new version comes out three times as thick when you compare the density. The Q1 issue has 24 article sections versus 16 in the most recent editions.
Because we’ve removed distribution at newsstands (you can now only get FLYING Magazine by subscribing), we made the cover very simple with no text or barcode that detracts from the image. On the new cover, you’ll only find the FLYING logo, an aircraft themed photo, and the Issue number and date at the bottom. We think this cleaner look creates something you’re more likely to display in your home or office than what we offered before.
The updates weren’t just on the cover—you’ll find more upgrades inside, as well. We used more modern design techniques to give the magazine a fresher look that’s easier to navigate. You’ll find a lot more articles and photos than before and we removed some of the cluttered ads that populated the old magazine. You will still find a few ads sprinkled in, but we’ve implemented tighter design standards and limited the amount of ads per issue.
While we’ve made FLYING a quarterly publication, this doesn’t mean we’ll only produce four editions each year. We have plans for at least two special editions in 2022, one in the summer around adventure flying and a buyer’s guide in the fall for a total of six print magazines in 2022. With the enlarged quarterly print editions and the special editions we have planned, a FLYING subscriber will receive more content than in recent years.
The print edition is also focused on evergreen content that is less about news and similar coverage. We have been ramping up our website for timely news and topics, which features about 10 new articles each day. In fact, with the redesigned FLYINGMag.com website and investments in digital, traffic to the web version of FLYING has increased fourfold since we took over, and the site continues to break records.
I strongly encourage you to subscribe to the new FLYING Magazine. It’s only available to subscribers, you won’t find it in the stores, anywhere.
Our revamped print magazine is the finest aviation magazine on the market and we would appreciate your support.
I would love to know what you think of the new version of FLYING and we’d love for you to send us comments or suggestions on how we can make the magazine even better. Connect with me on Twitter @freightalley.
