Nearly 20 Years Of Airborne — And We're Just Getting Started

It's a little difficult to believe that we're approaching 20 years since we started putting together the pieces that became Aero-TV and, eventually, the Airborne series (and over 30 years since ANN got its start!).

Go back to roughly Oshkosh 2007, and the aviation media environment was a very different place. Online video was still developing, broadband wasn't remotely as universal as it is today, smartphones had barely begun changing the way people consumed information, and the idea of producing serious, recurring aviation video news programming for internet distribution was still something of an experiment.

We decided to experiment anyway.

Nearly two decades later, that experiment has turned into thousands of programs, interviews, news stories, special reports and event productions covering an extraordinary period in aviation history.

Airborne has won awards, covered virtually every meaningful corner of aviation and aerospace, interviewed thousands of the people who build, fly, regulate and occasionally complicate this industry, and accumulated a video record of modern aviation that we don't believe any other aviation publication can match.

We don't say that to pound our chests. We say it because, after nearly 20 years, the numbers are there and the archive is there.

More important, though, aviation isn't the same industry we started covering nearly two decades ago, and the way people consume information certainly isn't the same. That means we can't be the same, either.

Over the years we've continually modified Airborne and Aero-TV to accommodate changing subjects, technologies and audiences. We've built special editions, live programs, event coverage and dedicated programming around subjects that deserved more attention than could reasonably be provided by a conventional aviation newscast.

We're about to accelerate that process.

One of the first changes will involve a program many of you already know: Airborne NextGen.

Airborne NextGen originally came about because the unmanned aircraft world was exploding and it deserved intelligent, dedicated aviation coverage rather than the breathless treatment drones were frequently receiving elsewhere. As that industry developed, however, the boundaries started disappearing.

Unmanned aircraft led naturally into autonomous systems. New vertical-lift configurations and electric propulsion pushed us toward Advanced Air Mobility. AAM introduced new approaches to aircraft design, propulsion, flight controls and infrastructure. Some of those technologies began intersecting with traditional general aviation, while others crossed over into commercial aviation, defense and even space.

Eventually we realized that we weren't really covering a category anymore. We were covering change.

More specifically, we were covering the leading — and occasionally bleeding — edge of aviation technology.

So... Airborne NextGen is becoming Airborne Innovation.

The new name describes the mission considerably better because we don't want to artificially constrain this program according to whatever category somebody decides a new technology belongs in.

If somebody develops a genuinely useful new propulsion system, we want to examine it. If autonomy starts changing cockpit operations, we want to understand it. If an unconventional aircraft configuration demonstrates real advantages, we want to fly it, investigate it and tell you what we've learned. If artificial intelligence starts materially affecting aircraft design, maintenance, operations or safety, we're interested. If developments in space technology have legitimate implications for aviation, they're fair game as well.

And, perhaps most importantly, we're interested in separating innovation from hype.

Aviation has never suffered from a shortage of spectacular promises. Some become transformational technologies. Others become expensive PowerPoint presentations. Part of our job is figuring out which is which.

Airborne Innovation gives us a dedicated place to do exactly that. It is also only one part of a larger evolution now underway within ANN's video programming.

An Airborne Avionics edition is coming shortly, concentrating on one of the fastest-changing and most technically important areas of modern aviation. We're also completing plans for additional specialized versions and adaptations of Airborne that will allow us to dig considerably deeper into subjects that deserve sustained attention.

At the same time, none of this means abandoning what built Airborne in the first place.

The fundamentals haven't changed. We're still aviation people covering aviation. We still believe knowledgeable journalism matters. We still believe there is a substantial difference between reporting and promotion, and we still believe our audience deserves enough information to make up its own mind.

What has changed are the tools available to us, the technologies we're covering and the ways in which people want that information delivered.

Nearly 20 years after we started this adventure, that's an exciting problem to have. Aero-TV and Airborne were born during one major transformation in aviation media. We're now entering another, and rather than protecting what we've already built, we're going to use it as the foundation for what comes next.

Airborne NextGen becoming Airborne Innovation is one piece of that process. Airborne Avionics will be another. Several more are already taking shape behind the scenes.

After thousands of programs and nearly two decades of telling aviation's story via video, we've learned at least one thing with absolute certainty:

There is always another story coming. And we've got a cheerful warning for you: so do we.