Media: Evolving The Flight Brand By Murdo Morrison

After 14 years leading Flight International as editor, Murdo Morrison was promoted to head of strategic content within Flightglobal in 2015 to fully exploit his skills and enormous market knowledge across the aerospace sector. He manages Flight Daily News and the Flightglobal thought leadership initiative, which delivers enhanced analysis and content widely to the aerospace market.

In a pandemic-free parallel universe, 2020 would have been a momentous year for FlightGlobal. There were plans to take monthly Flight International, a magazine that had appeared (more or less) weekly since 1909. We also intended transforming flightglobal.com - aviation’s widest-read news web site - into a paid-for product.

The fact that we went ahead with both had little to do with Covid. They were necessary because of other long-term trends - a continuing move by advertisers and readers away from print, and a willingness among business-to-business consumers to cut through the “noise” of the internet and pay for quality, curated content.

So FlightGlobal goes into what we hope will be a sustained, if slow, recovery in the aviation market in the new year convinced that we have the right business model for the market, albeit one that has caused a few convulsions among those used to reading their favourite title every week, and others accustomed to receiving their aviation news and analysis for free online.

That aside, things continue to be awful for aviation publishers, as for everyone else. Advertising collapsed in March and April across the board and has only stutteringly returned. There is next to no jobs advertising. Air shows - one of our biggest sources of revenue, online and for our print show dailies - have not happened since February and are unlikely to until mid-2021 at least.

Did I suspect as my colleagues and I headed back in mid-February from a Singapore air show battered by last-minute pull-outs by exhibitors nervous about a virus that had begun to spread beyond China to other parts of Asia that it would be the last business flight I would be taking in more than a year?

One of my jobs at FlightGlobal is editing our Flight Daily News portfolio at half a dozen or so air shows and conventions a year. In a normal year, I am also out of the country at least once a month, attending other events or visiting aerospace companies in Europe and occasionally further afield. At this stage, I don’t know when and how much of that former life will return.

With the cancellation of the Paris air show in June, the first big dates for us are EBACE in Geneva in May and the MAKS air show in Moscow in July. As I write, both of these are still officially “on”. After that, there is the rescheduled AIX interiors show in Hamburg in September, NBAA BACE in October, and the Dubai air show in November. So potentially the second half of 2021 could be busy.

With the vaccine roll-outs picking up pace over spring, next summer could mark the point at which the world begins to get back to normal. A rush for the beaches - as predicted by Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary - and a desire to catch up with family and friends, will deliver a huge financial and psychological shot in the arm (pun intended) for the struggling leisure and low-cost airlines.

As for business travel, that will take longer. Corporations will remain nervous about the legal and insurance implications of sending staff overseas, and remote working will have persuaded hard-pressed chief executives that not every trip is essential. Does the negotiation around that contract actually require two people to fly to Hong Kong for three days, or could it be concluded over Zoom?

That said, many will be desperate to free themselves from their virtual confines and meet humans again face-to-face. We are social beings and business works better in person. I never thought I’d long for the 3am alarm to jolt me to the shower and that drive to Gatwick for a long day trip to Toulouse. But after 10 months of lockdown, I can’t wait to get back in the skies, and out in the world again.

BlueSky Business Aviation News | 17th December 2020 | Issue #586