Five years ago to the date,
Bangalore Aviation started its journey. 1,929 articles later, we have grown to become one of the best aviation blogs in the world. All thanks to you - our valued readers and supporters, within and outside the aviation industry.
On this anniversary I would like to share with you some of the highlights of our site, and some of the memorable articles, in my humble opinion, at
Bangalore Aviation over the last five years. If I have missed any out please do share via the comment system.
In 2008, I started Bangalore Aviation to offer independent information and views on the aviation scenario in Bangalore. As you know Bangalore Aviation is a labour of love and not driven by commercial considerations. This ensures our independence and our ability to call a spade a spade. We may not be mass market, but I believe our ranking shows that we are respected.
When ever we visit trade shows, it thrills us, that journalists from the largest of news organisations to the smallest, senior to newbies, say hello to us, and tell us they are following us. It means a lot.
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Over the years, we expanded our horizons to cover three distinct niches - airlines, airports, and aircraft, both in written form, and in photographs.
Highlights of the Bangalore Aviation site
Logo
Our logo has been designed by a dear supporter, Narayan Gopalan. He is an ace visualiser and brand consultant. Feel free to
contact him for your needs. Thanks Narayan.
Our stats and rank
Our total page views and global rank is displayed in the right side-bar of the web page. As of today we are over 3.3 million page views, and ranked 10th globally amongst aviation blogs. Mobile users, and e-mail subscribers will not see these badges. So please do visit the main site, at least once in a while.
Social Media and off-line reading.
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To offer you the ability to read us at your convenience. Visit the siderbar on the top right of the page to explore our three methods:
- Daily e-mail subscription delivering new article snippets once a day direct to your mailbox.
- RSS feeds to read the snippets and visit the site for articles you find interesting
- Google Currents. The newest reader for IOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android (phones and tablets) devices. We need your support to grow our subscription base.Subscribe and download from here.
On
Twitter, we have the official BangaloreAviation account (
@BLRAviation). Both
Vinay and
Devesh have individual accounts also. Please follow all three accounts on Twitter.
We are also present on
Facebook,
Google+, and on
Pinterest. Please do visit our pages and give us a thumbs-up.
Commenting system
We are very proud of our commenting system which is powered by Disqus, and used on many sites across the world. One of the best comments received in our early days is posted in
this story.
We always welcome and receive regular interaction from our readers and are thankful to each of our commenters for sharing their time and thoughts.
The most recent comments are posted in the bottom right of the page.
We are open to both brick-bats or bouquets.
You like us? great, please post that.
You have an alternate view? we welcome it; please post that too.
You disagree with us? share your views, we may not be correct and will be honoured to correct our stand, if needed.
You want to abuse us, sorry this is where we draw the line. We always post comments as long as they are not derogatory, personal or foul.
Due to the richness of the Disqus system, at present the commenting system is limited to the full web version. We are working to bring it on to the mobile platform.
Recommendations
To improve the site experience, we have recommendations to additional articles at the end of the page. Check them out. Again this is limited to our full web version. We are working to get this on the mobile version.
Due to the richness of Disqus, this commenting system is available only in the full web version online. We are working on bringing it to the mobile version as well.
The right sidebar
Is a treasure trove of snippets of information like subscription links, translation links, the most popular articles of the last 30 days, recent article, our ENTIRE archive, our rankings, links to get the latest stock prices on the Indian airlines, our blog roll recommending other sites to visit, etc. It all there to explore.
Some of our memorable articles
The last five years have been a challenge, but fun filled. The early years were devoted to airports and the challenges faced by the Bengaluru International Airport to get going. We had stories like
holding BIAL to a higher standard and what an airport truly is and its economic and human impact.
A trip report and how BIAL corrected the short-comings of its early days, and I was truly privileged to be given a
"behind the scenes" look at how an airport functions by no less than the Chief of Operations, at that time, Marcel Hungerbuehler.
Two articles I am especially proud of, were the "Sanity Check" articles. The
first found fault in the government's grandiose plans for a high speed rail link to airport, and as a responsible citizen, in the second, we proposed
an alternate solution for rail connectivity.
As a consumer advocate and a believer in fair play, we wrote
how passengers pay as much as 600% more fees to airports than airlines do.
Our analysis articles covered the
crash of 2008, the
cautious recovery in 2010 (also published in
The Mint), and all the analyses,
annual or
topical or financial by Vinay Bhaskara.
Our exclusive one on one interviews with leaders in the aviation business are sought after.
Sanjay Aggarwal and
Neil Mills of SpiceJet,
Dinesh Keskar of Boeing,
Giorgio De Roni of GoAir,
Masaru Onishi of Japan Airlines, and
G.M. Toh of Singapore Airlines are just a few gurus who shared their insights with all of us.
An innocent question on an aviation forum made us write one of our most popular articles, a
prosumers reference to technical information on runways. Another reference we are proud of is the
series on the unique tail-art of Air India Express' Boeing 737s. In historical reference, my most emotion provoking article, for me at least, still remains
the one on Concorde. We also covered
the 40 year old rivalry between Boeing and Airbus.
Stories containing images of cabins are very popular. All of us like to research what to expect.
Jet Airways' Boeing 777,
Singapore Airlines' Airbus A330-300,
Cathay Pacific's new Premium and International Economy class, or
Air India's Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Humour and the unusual punctuated the otherwise serious business of aviation. Be it how
Kingfisher Airlines made pigs and dogs fly, or the
fire raising African mangoes, the
award chopsticks of Japan Airlines, or how the
A380 is too quiet for Emirates' pilots to get sleep.
One airline that has always attracted attention is Kingfisher Airlines. Bangalore Aviation detailed the initial signs of implosion at the airline when it
sold its A340-500s to Arik Air of Nigeria, who
gained a lot from the Doctor's extravagance. We covered the national carrier Air India,
how it is abused,
how do we solve the conundrum, or
warning for the government to act. We also covered
the meteoric expansion of the unofficial national carrier, Emirates.
The human nature for salaciousness drove many of the more regrettable stories of crashes and incidents like this
video of the crash of a FedEx MD-11F at Tokyo Narita.
And we cannot complete our journey without all those beautiful images. Check out our photo albums
here and
here.
While thanking you for supporting us for the last five years, we will endeavour to repeat this exercise five years hence.
- Devesh Agarwal
