The Times Are a Changing
Change has been a relatively rare commodity at Australian Aviation.
Established more than 40 years ago, the magazine has followed a largely tried and true formula, enduring through multiple technological developments in aviation and a more confronting challenge posed by the burgeoning world of digital publishing.
In that time it has grown into a publication acknowledged as the leader in its field in Australasia, further supported in recent times by our news and feature website thewofa.com and the digital incarnation of the magazine.
Through it all, the print magazine has retained a bedrock of dedicated subscribers and retail buyers, many of them aviation industry experts, many of them civilian and military pilots, aircrew and engineers, or – like me – hardcore aviation enthusiasts who still get a buzz from sitting alongside a perimeter fence.
I call myself an aircraft nerd – and proud of it.
Now, at a time when many a print magazine is going out of business or, at best, wholly retreating behind a website, we are aiming to build on that 40-year-strong foundation with a change in print publishing strategy aimed squarely at expanding our coverage while delivering greater opportunity to the problem experienced by “time-poor” customers.
Our answer is two-fold: a change in the publishing cycle to deliver Australian Aviation as a bi-monthly, allowing more time for readers to consume it, while bringing to market a new aviation magazine with a wider, more global emphasis.
World of Aviation will have a new look, different format, mainly feature content and will engage expert coverage from the US, Europe, Asia and – even closer to home – New Zealand and the Pacific islands.
There will also be Australia-based content where it has worldwide implications. World of Aviation, or WOFA as we have tagged it, will also be a bi-monthly, dovetailing with the Australian Aviation print cycle.
In other words our dedicated subscribers will still receive a magazine once a month while our retail customers looking for us on the newsstands will have the chance to buy one or other or both.
The first World of Aviation will be distributed towards the end of next month and before then we will bring you another exciting development: a World of Aviation website.
Rare changes, but changes for the better.
Best,