Flight magazine online archive

I think that you have greater faith than I do, MM!

Well it’s nice that you got a reply, AA. I do wonder why it is taking longer than expected and fear that the archive, if/when it re-appears, will look very different and not be as user-friendly as previously. I hope to be proved wrong in this too!

With the passage of a year since first I noticed that the Flight magazine archive had ceased to be available online, yesterday I sent what I presumed would be a valedictory e-mail to its publisher. I did not expect a reply. But I received one. That reply was:

‘Please be assured that we are still working on getting the historical content back online. Unfortunately, it is taking longer than expected.’

I do not wish to be seen as inconsiderate or ungrateful, but the resemblance of that message to others received, from the same source over the past twelve months, makes it hard for me to believe the assurance given. Having said that, I shall be delighted to be proved wrong – but I shan’t hold my breath whilst waiting!

Jolly good idea, Oracal. I could use it to sell my spare 1856 British Guiana 1 Cent magenta postage stamps as soon as they roll off the printer and the ink dries. They are a snip at $4.74 million each, just half the price for which the last one sold!

Steady on ‘aa’, this could be just the site to sell my bound copies of early Flight and The Aero magazines…  

Bouncing this thread a little!….. I believe the gent who was heavily involved in the digitization of Flight back around 2009 used to post on this forum…anybody remember him or have contact details?

Thank you, DJJ. The absence of any mention of that in the message I received from it suggests that Flight doesn’t want my business!

Whilst I used the Flight online archive frequently when it was free at the point of access, I fear that my level of use would be insufficient to justify me paying a minimum of £165 pa for the privilege. I’ll probably register as a user and make do with the four hits per month – although I wonder for how long the current owners of Flight will be willing to support the online archive’s continued existence if the footfall is, as you surmise DJJ, significantly reduced. One can only hope that, before this happens, the Internet Archive will upload more copies of the magazine (at present it covers only the years 1909-35).

Email this morning (I’m a registered user who they’re urging to sign up).

The subscription page on their website  – it might be bad form to post a link on a different publisher’s site! – gives the full details.  Under the scheme you can either be a registered user and, frankly, not get much benefit from the site at all, or go for a digital package or a digital + hard copy of the magazine option for a few pence per week more.

What is the source of that information, DJJ? No mention was made of it when last I heard from Flight (which was on 4 June) on this subject. What was said to me then was:

We are still working to reinstate the archive in 2020. At this stage we do not have a date for when it will be back online. We know how many people rely on this historical archive, and we understand the frustration about not having access to it. Thank you for your patience as we develop the best way to experience the Flight historical PDF archive online.

If anyone is still following this, the archive will be back – but there’s a catch, in that you have to subscribe to it.

The current price structure seems to suggest that it’ll be captured in a subscription package of about £150 per year (which gives you access to everything on the Flight site).  Also, if you don’t subscribe, you’re limited to accessing 4 articles per month, which, I imagine, may reduce traffic to the site…

Thanks for the link, AA. At least there are a couple of options out there for viewing some of the archive.

There is an interesting article on this subject to be found at https://airminded.org/2020/02/24/partial-flightglobal-archive-archives/.

It definitely will be a sad day if our worst fears are confirmed and the archive is gone for good. I feel we are seeing the best days of the internet slowly disappearing. By best, of course, I mean the days when things were free to use, easy to use and useful for serious research. I guess we can hope that archive.org may host further issues of Flight as they come out of copyright (if that is the reason for them only being up to 1935 at present) but they’re not so easily searchable there.

I fear that we may have seen the last of the publisher hosted Flight online archive. It must be at least three months since it became inaccessible and the same message appears now as appeared then. It will be sad if it is the case that we have lost such a useful research tool, even if an incomplete run (up to approximately 1935) of the magazine is accessible online elsewhere. If it is the case that it has gone for good, then the obvious deduction must be that the new owners of the publication do not perceive there to be a cost benefit in making this archive available to the public, either free (as before) or even on a ‘pay to view’ basis. But as ever is the case, it is their possession to do with as they will.

Thank you. I was unaware of that website. I’ll have to look closely at it to see what else is accessible there.

It’s a shame that the Flight archive appears to have a 1935 cut-off point. I wonder whether that is a consequence of UK copyright law?

Now all we need is for someone to upload a complete run of back copies of The Aeroplane to, at least, 1935. Then I will be happy!

Yes, searchable by date if you know the year or particular issue you want. Obviously not the complete Flight Archive but it seems to run to over 1000 issues.

Some to 1935 available here

https://archive.org/search.php?query=Flight+Magazine&and%5B%5D=subject%3A%22Flight+International+Magazine%22&sort=date&page=1

Have just discovered that Archive.org has loads of historic issues of Flight magazine 🙂

On AB-IX groups 

“I understand that Flight Global has recently been sold so I would not be optimistic. Likely one may need to subscribe in future. Let’s hope I am wrong. “

Flight was sold by RBI to DWW Media Group in August of 2019; and the last reference to the 100 Year Archive appears to have been in the issue of 7th January 2020.

Still no change. I’m beginning to fear the worst.