airnav
Pre-Flight
Really? This is news to me, and I thought I was very familiar with AirNav's products. How much do we charge an FBO to receive comments?
Airport/Facility Feedback on AirNav
- Thread starter OtisAir
- Start date
Really? This is news to me, and I thought I was very familiar with AirNav's products. How much do we charge an FBO to receive comments?
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
Really? This is news to me, and I thought I was very familiar with AirNav's products. How much do we charge an FBO to receive comments?
Your answer is here
http://www.airnav.com/listings/subscribe/6Y9/A
airnav
Pre-Flight
EdFred, we don't have a solution for you at this time. We do not have a place for comments about non-existing FBOs. Comments are attached to the presence of a business or service at an airport. I believe AOPA supports comments about the airport in general, so that may be an immediate solution for you.
Alternatively, if you have your own web site about your airport you can host comments there, and AirNav would be glad to provide a free link to you site.
airnav
Pre-Flight
Very classy
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
airnav
Pre-Flight
That is not about comments. It is about listing services, logos, etc. Not comments. Comments are and always have been free.
airnav
Pre-Flight
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
Excellent, thank you!
And I know you don't have to pay to get comments, but you have to pay to advertise (duh!) which allows you comments. The issue was FBOs (or my case) that didn't advertise, but there was no way to leave feedback.
schmookeeg
En-Route
How does one leave a comment for an airport business which does not pay for a listing?
An example near me: Benbow Aviation at KTOA, Torrance, CA -- your site knows about it, but there is no listing or mention of it, and no facility (that I can find) to comment about them.
I think the big disconnect, for me anyway, is the idea that ONLY subscribers are listed now. I think this is what EdFred was alluding to as well when he commented that comments cost money.
But I might be missing it?
- Mike
An example near me: Benbow Aviation at KTOA, Torrance, CA -- your site knows about it, but there is no listing or mention of it, and no facility (that I can find) to comment about them.
I think the big disconnect, for me anyway, is the idea that ONLY subscribers are listed now. I think this is what EdFred was alluding to as well when he commented that comments cost money.
But I might be missing it?
- Mike
airnav
Pre-Flight
You're welcome.
Asking businesses to pay to advertise is not bad, is it? Many FBO's don't advertise but we still provide a place for comments about them. Within 50 miles of you (6Y9) we are aware of the existence of 6 FBOs. Of those, 4 pay us to advertise and 2 don't. We show all 6 on our site, and all 6 have comments.
In your case, the lack of a place for comments is due to a lack of an FBO. I suggest you accommodate comments on your own web site, and we already provide a link to it.
airnav
Pre-Flight
Mike,
Benbow Aviation is not an FBO. In fact, we're not sure it even exists. Even the City of Torrance's web site has a page which supposedly lists all the businesses and services at the airport, and Benbow Aviation is not listed. The web site www.benbowaviation.com used to exist but is now dead. At this point, we have no reason to believe that Benbow Aviation still exists. And regrettably we do not even have the resources to track down every non-FBO business to find out if they even exist.
We do try to track down and list every FBO, paying subscriber or not. By FBO we mean the business that provides ground support for transient aircraft -- typically the guys selling fuel. I know we don't get them all 100% right, but we try hard, and we estimate that we get it about 98% right -- which is way better than anybody else. Most of the ones we miss are out in the sparsely populated parts of the country and very hard to track down.
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
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- Lincoln, Nebraska
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Display name:
Jason W (FlyNE)
Ed, for the sake of all that is holy on the internet, will you please stop the site from resizing my browser window? That kind of monkey business went out of fashion in like 1999.
colohan
Pre-takeoff checklist
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2008
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- 163
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Display name:
Chris Colohan
In case you think we are all negative around here....
I love AirNav. It is really freaking useful when I'm flying somewhere I have not been before. Thank you for running this, and I hope it continues to be as useful in the future as it is today!
Chris
I love AirNav. It is really freaking useful when I'm flying somewhere I have not been before. Thank you for running this, and I hope it continues to be as useful in the future as it is today!
Chris
schmookeeg
En-Route
Fair enough, and it's your site, but here's what I see as both an end-user and a subscriber:
Sticking with my KTOA example, the airnav page lists two sections:
Fuel providers
(2 listed)
Businesses, services, and facilities
(1 listed)
now TOA is not a "sparsely populated" airport, and I am certain there are more than 3 businesses there. I made the assumption that only paying businesses get listed, and you seem to be implying this is not true. Okay. So where does the line get drawn? Which businesses are listed free of charge, and which require payment? Are there certain types of businesses which are allowed, and others which are not?
Also, why does AirNav "know about" the following businesses at KTOA, but does not list them?
Alexair Helicopters
Baker Aero Electric
Benbow Aviation
D'Anello Aviation
Pacific Coast Helicopters
Ramada Inn
Robinson Helicopter Company
Rolling Hills Aviation
South Bay Aviation
Star Ads (Mario Lopez)
Torrance Air Fair Association
Torrance Aircraft Maintenance, LLC.
Torrance Airport Association
Torrance Flite Park, LLC
Western Air Flying Club
If it is just a matter of insufficient manpower to keep listings updated, I'm certain you could just allow us users a way to keep things accurate. Lord knows the users are ravenous with fuel pricing updates, I suspect they'd vote off a defunct business pretty swiftly too.
The problem is, I suspect it is not just a matter of insufficient manpower, but rather, that these places will not be listed without ponying up. I'm not saying that is wrong, but it definitely appears that way to me on the sidelines. So what's the real scoop?
I'm not just picking on KTOA, it's just one of the worst ones that I know about -- and it seems to be all over the place where I frequent, and I've heard it from a number of others. When I use AirNav, I actually will click on the "add your business here" link, just to get a full and complete picture of what is available at a certain airport. That's a broken way of doing things.
I'd love to know the real scoop, and if I can help at all as a pilot to make it better. I pay you guys some $800 or so per year just to get my businesses listed at my own field, and I want to make sure that I receive value for dollar, and that Airnav remains relevant -- if Airnav becomes an "advertising hostage taker" with its listings, the site will fade in relevance quite fast, eroding my investment.
Cheers,
- Mike
I use the heck out of AirNav, and I appreciate having it as a resource.
Thanks for showing up and sharing some "behind the scenes" info, AirNav Guy.
Thanks for showing up and sharing some "behind the scenes" info, AirNav Guy.
4CornerFlyer
Line Up and Wait
Things that have made long distance flying easier for me:
1. the internal combustion engine
2. GPS navigation
3. in-cockpit satellite weather
4. Airnav
Thanks, Airnav guy. Would you be Paolo?
Jon
1. the internal combustion engine
2. GPS navigation
3. in-cockpit satellite weather
4. Airnav
Thanks, Airnav guy. Would you be Paolo?
Jon
Actually sir, If I may clarify, I am glad to see you posting and wish you well in setting the records straight. The cleaning up behind yourself was a reference to the "mess" your post would cause calling out a respected member of this forum. I will be interested to see his response. But like you said, you had to say it and the truth is welcome everywhere...
I can see where I did a poor job or conveying my thoughts into electrons. Please accept my sincerest apology. Thats the thing about the written word, the inflections and emotion just doesn't transfer well. If we would have been sitting down at the airport together when I "said" that, I would hoped the humor would have came through. Clearly it didn't here.
That said, I use your website and thank you for your efforts.
Kelvin Draughon
t0r0nad0
Pattern Altitude
Hear, hear! I've been on it at least a half dozen times in the past two days alone!
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
Ed, for the sake of all that is holy on the internet, will you please stop the site from resizing my browser window? That kind of monkey business went out of fashion in like 1999.
Hey, if you wanna redo my site for me with php go at it.
SkyHog
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2005
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- 18,431
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- Castle Rock, CO
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Display name:
Everything Offends Me
That's interesting. There is another person here that had a comment deleted based on a legal threat through Airnav. The airport was either KAEG or KSKX, I can't recall. I won't mention the user unless he comes out in this thread, but I remember it being a very nasty little mess.
I'm curious when Airnav changed to add FBOs that didn't pay for the right to advertise? I can guarantee you that Airnav does not list all the FBOs in the area around here, and I've seen some FBOs only start to be listed once they started paying for the right to, so this must have changed recently.
FWIW, looking at the site, I can now see a lot more FBOs listed around me than used to be listed, which is a good thing, and for that, Paolo gets kudos from me for doing the right thing. But its not right to hide behind that always being true because it simply isn't.
It appears that you are trying to do things right, and I applaud you for that. If you are open to suggestions, might I suggest the ability to leave airport specific comments, rather than business specific? For example, at KAEG, you have 1 FBO listed (there is only one since they clawed their way into solo businessship), but it would be awesome to be able to leave comments about the airport itself, since I never use the services that FBO provides.
Thanks for coming out here, Paolo, it can get rough sometimes, but I honestly believe you have the best interests of GA at heart.
SkyHog
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2005
- Messages
- 18,431
- Location
- Castle Rock, CO
- Display Name
Display name:
Everything Offends Me
You need a better picture of the field. Surely someone's gotta have a high res photo from one of the fly ins!
Not being overly critical, but it would be nice!
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
My mom got one on final in Bruce's Seneca, but has not sent it to me yet.
Edit: Found one, not the one I wanted, however.
I actually want to revamp the whole site, but I don't have the programming resources...basically, I can cobble something together in html and that's about it.
Edit: Found one, not the one I wanted, however.
I actually want to revamp the whole site, but I don't have the programming resources...basically, I can cobble something together in html and that's about it.
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Lawreston
En-Route
As to what's supported by Airnav I would note that little Ol' Merrymeeting Aviation(Bowdoinham, Maine K08B) is there, tiny as is is. The fuel tanks were removed
several years ago and it's down to just a few planes resident; but it's a popular destination for droppers-in from fixed wing to ultralights.
I know PoA's "One Short" used it(AirNav and 08B) when she did her Eastern tour several years ago. Oh; and the photo is mine.
HR
several years ago and it's down to just a few planes resident; but it's a popular destination for droppers-in from fixed wing to ultralights.
I know PoA's "One Short" used it(AirNav and 08B) when she did her Eastern tour several years ago. Oh; and the photo is mine.
HR
airnav
Pre-Flight
Mike,
It's great to have you in this discussion, because you are both a pilot end-user and an FBO subscriber. You already have two perspectives, and I can add the AirNav perspective.
You are absolutely right, it's a manpower issue. Let me explain...
Initially we were naively doing as you suggested: let the community add and remove businesses, don't charge anything for listings, and it would all work out because the community would self-maintain the data and we would be just a hosting platform.
Well, we were proven wrong.
Few businesses ever got deleted or marked "out of business" by the community. As a result, after a few years we had a database full of non-existent businesses, as appears to be the case now with Benbow Aviation (which we do not list, btw) and many of those other business you mention at TOA. Pilots were complaining that they would visit an airport expecting to find a certain service, then not find it and be extremely disappointed at us (that's putting it mildly; some pilots were going well beyond disappointed.)
On the other side, frivolous businesses were getting listed. Our rule was that we would list any business that provided a service to GA at the airport. Not only businesses based at the airport, but all businesses serving GA at the airport because we wanted the ability to include restaurants across the street, or the local independent flight instructor who does not really have an office at the airport but can instruct there anyway, or anyone else that provided a service to GA. Then we started getting inundated with what we now call frivolous listings. There was this locksmith in Denver who argued that he deserved to be listed because "pilots might lose the keys to their airplane while they visit Denver and we would be useful to them then". There was this guy in Michigan with a van and some car-washing equipment who claimed he could wash airplanes too, and was willing to drive 300 miles to do it, therefore he deserved to be listed on every airport within 300 miles. You get the point. Because listings were free, everyone had this sense of entitlement that they deserved one (or 300). We were allowing many listings, and some airport pages were already cluttered with 50+ listings, a lot of them no longer valid or frivolous.
Most of those listings had zero comments, which to us indicated that they were irrelevant to the community.
In a nutshell, with our limited manpower we were not able to keep up and maintain a useful and correct data set, and the community was not helping maintain it, not caring about a lot of the businesses (as evidenced by the lack of comments on many of them) and was even complaining about the inaccuracies.
So we took a long hard look at the usefulness of the site, and decided to focus our limited resources on what pilots cared about the most: FBOs and restaurants and fuel prices. An FBO is something you use every time you go flying. A restaurant is something you plan to fly to. On the other hand, a maintenance shop or a flight school is something you mostly use at your own home field (and you are more familiar with those than we can possibly be, you don't need AirNav for that) and only very occasionally when away from home. Often when you need a maintenance shop away from home it would have been totally unplanned, and there would be no point in having them listed on AirNav because you were not planning on that alternator failure anyway. So we made the tough decision to focus on what we believed was more important to pilots, and regrettably had to do away with the free service to most others.
As a result, on some godawful night in 2004 we started removing listings that were not an FBO or restaurant and had not received any comment in the past 12 months. We just had no time to check up on all of them. We started focusing on the FBOs and restaurants, calling them to validate the info, making sure they existed, getting updated prices, etc. But then it became clear that restaurants were too difficult: they change way too often. It must be a tough industry to be in. So we further focused on FBOs only. Others were welcome to be listed too, limited by the amount of time we can devote to the free listings.
We also introduced paid listings. Paid listings were a great thing, because that single annual exchange (we send an invoice, you send a check) validated that the business still existed and that it cared to serve GA. We were charging as little as $12 per year, figuring that if you can't spend $1 per month you're not really seriously in business serving the GA community that frequents AirNav.com. We also created several levels of paid listings to accommodate different business needs, some significantly more expensive.
This move seems to have worked. We now have by far the best and most current FBO database out there. Site usage and participation is up consistently. We have more pilots writing comments, and we have more FBOs embracing the concept and participating. The $12 listing has gone the way of the dodo, but we still have the $15 listing that FredEd can subscribe to. The income from the businesses that choose to subscribe is used to keep the lights on, keep the servers running, pay the rent and pay the staff. We are proud that this service to and by the aviation community now supports the livelihood of 5 (soon to be 6) families. We have employees who maintain the site, answer your emails, work in a safe and pleasant environment (you should see our office!) and take home a dignified salary and full health benefits. One of our esteemed employees, a grandma, is now thinking about starting flying lessons. How cool is that?
With this historical context out of the way, let me address your specific concerns.
You made the wrong assumption. Look at KTOA's listings on AirNav. Great American and Southwest pay us, South Bay does not. You can tell the difference because the paying ones are clickable (or have logos) and the free ones are not clickable. Yet South Bay gets listed too, albeit a little bit poorer listing but still with the essentials for pilots: name, phone number, fuel prices and comments.
We try to list every FBO -- although I am sure someone here is going to point out some FBO somewhere that is missing. That's why I say "try". To come clean, at TOA itself we were notified on 9/15/09 that there is now a third FBO. We are in the process of contacting them and getting all the right information to list them too (free or pay). This takes time, it's not instantaneous, so please bear with us. TOA is not the only airport in the country.
Which businesses are listed free of charge and which require payment? Any business can be listed free. We do those on a workload-permitting basis, and we focus on FBOs. Reality is, we are busy enough with paying customers and with non-paying FBOs that we always have a backlog of those to do. Yet some non-FBOs get listed free too. For example, the pilot facility at First Flight Airport is well loved by pilots and is listed free, and gets respect from the community and a fair number of useful comments. So it gets listed free. As of today, we have 624 free listings of non-FBOs, and 1572 free listings of FBOs. We check on all of these at least once a year, sometimes more. It is a cost that we bear in support of the community. Those 624+1572 don't pay us a dime.
Now reality is that we have commitments to our customers, and commitments come first. Mike, you contract with us for a service, and we have service commitments. We promise to update your listing in xx hours, to update your fuel prices in xx minutes, whatever. Those come first, because they are contractual commitments. We are staffed to do all of our contracted commitments and then some. With the extra time we support comments (that no one pays for), we format and place airport photos (that no one pays for), we support a fair amount of free listings (that no one pays for), etc. Can we promise that we will have all free listings on the site at all times? No. Can we promise that we will add a certain free listing by any specific time? No. Sorry, all those are done in the cracks, time-permitting.
As a business, can you request a free listing? Yes. Can you expect a free listing by tomorrow? No. You go in the queue, and we get to you when we get to you. The free listings are provided as a service to the aviation community, not a service to the business desiring it. We have an internal queue for handling these, and we do get to all, eventually.
Are there certain types of businesses which are allowed, and others which are not? All legal businesses that provide a service to GA are allowed. Paid service gets done within our time commitments, free service on a workload-permitting basis. We take a broad view of what is a service to GA, to the point of allowing restaurants, taxi service, etc. Businesses that are not of interest to GA users are not allowed, paid or free, because they would unnecessarily clutter up the pages. These requests are rare. But just yesterday I saw a request by a realtor who sold homes in the city (not on the airpark, mind you) wanting to list, because "a pilot who flies to our airport may be relocating and needing to buy a home here." This is such a stretch that we did not allow the listing, paid or free.
We at one time "knew about" these business. Because we do not have the time to check on them, we no longer "know about" them. So we choose not to list them because we believe many are defunct. Torrance Flite Park, LLC is the supposed new FBO, which we are trying to get listed asap. The others are just non-FBOs that we have not had time to check up on. Several appear to be out of business.
I don't know what the Lord knows, I have no good connections up there. I know that I know that users only contribute less than 10% of the price updates. Most price updates come from FBOs and from our own calls to FBOs. I also know what happened when we let the users self-report: we got a database full of unreported defunct entries and lots of frivolous entries.
So the real scoop is as I said above: we can't list all for free. We list over 2000 for free. We are not the aviation yellow pages, so you can't except to find everyone here. But we are the absolute best at FBOs, and we devote a significant amount of time at validating and maintaining thousands of free content items (listings, comments, photos, airport diagrams, etc.)
Yes it is broken. The "Add your business" link is not meant for that. We do not list those businesses precisely because we have no confidence in the data. When you click on that link you get a very twisted version of what may have once existed at that airport. Bad bad bad, don't do it.
Mike, check your accounting, You do not pay us anywhere close to $800. It's much less. I am not going to discuss your account here publicly, but if you have any questions please call or email our customer service and they'll be able to go over your account with you. (check your PM for details) Also, it's not "just to get your business listed". You do not have just a Basic listing. You chose to have a higher level listing with features such as logos, etc. You could have a much cheaper listing, or you can drop out of the paid listings and we would do our best to keep you in the freebies.
Lawreston
En-Route
Hey, that's funny! In my above post I typed K08"B"(without the " ") and it shows up as K08B with the Smiley. ???????
HR
EDIT: But it didn't do in this initial post.
HR
EDIT: But it didn't do in this initial post.
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gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
I've read you policy and don't have any problem with it. I do think you should always email a commenter with the reason a comment was deleted or substantially altered explaining the reason(s) for the change and citing the items in your policy that were violated. I know that entails a substantial bit of effort but I think it would go a long way toward reducing the ill will towards Airnav for it's comment editing/policing.
gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
Do you list fuel prices for FBOs that don't subscribe? I don't have a problem with you charging for advertising but your site is most useful if all known prices are shown.
Also, is there a standard method for a pilot of FBO to let you know one exists that's not listed?
steingar
Taxi to Parking
Airnav rocks. Thanks Airnav dude!
gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
I have a suggestion. Why not add something marginally related to the "Add your bussiness" feature that lists all unverified entities along with a clear caveat indicating that these facilities may or may not exist. You could also state a policy that limits the types of businesses (or more specifically a list of services) that aren't allowed, making it somewhat practical for an automated or semi-automated approach to keeping it clear of most clutter.
I'm also curious as to the length of your unpaid entity listing request queue, in terms of the number and more importantly the typical time spent in the queue.
airnav
Pre-Flight
This thread is heating up, and I apologize in advance if I don't have the time to respond to everyone personally. I will try to pick some more representative posts and followup on those. If I don't directly respond to your post it's not because I am ignoring you. Your post is valuable, and I probably think I covered your concern in a response to some other post. If you think I missed a direct response, please repost or PM me alerting me to a missing response.
But I want to thank everyone for participating. To the AirNav supporters, a big thank you for the kudos. We circulate them to the staff, and they are well-needed boosts. Thanks.
For the AirNav naysayers, a big thank you for the intellectual stimulation and for your constructive criticism. You are helping us get better. Thanks to you too.
But I want to thank everyone for participating. To the AirNav supporters, a big thank you for the kudos. We circulate them to the staff, and they are well-needed boosts. Thanks.
For the AirNav naysayers, a big thank you for the intellectual stimulation and for your constructive criticism. You are helping us get better. Thanks to you too.
It's all about the shortcuts for smilies that use parenthesis. The shortcut for B) is B ) This catches lots of people. If you want to get rid of the smiley, put in a space like I did after the B or put in a dot like this. B.)
Welcome to POA.
AirNav is a very welcome site for the aviation community. There have been many criticisms circulating since you went to subscriptions and it is good that you are addressing those. Sounds like you are coming up with reasonable solutions to problems. It is good to hear from those with complaints and hear your explanations as well.
As far as this thread heating up, that is the way it is here. People get bent out of shape, then things cool off. Don't let it scare you away.
Once this has gotten all hashed out, I hope you keep coming back just to be a friend. We also need all points of view.
airnav
Pre-Flight
I would love to hear more about this.
To stress your point: the legal threat may have been through AirNav, but not from AirNav. We never sued or threatened to sue any comment writer. We have had a few cases where the impacted business sued or threatened to sue the comment author, the author couldn't stand the heat and asked us to remove the comment. We will remove any comment at any time for any reason (or no reason at all) when requested by the original author.
Never changed. We have always strived to list all FBOs. It's an unreachable goal, but we keep trying. Depending in workload and staff demand, sometimes we're doing better, sometimes we're doing worse. But we're always in the high-90%.
I am confused, Nick. Hide behind what?
We have always wanted to do this, but our insurance agent has a fit anytime we bring this up. The thought of people posting operational advice and others following that advice is just too scary for him. We would need more $ for insurance, and for that we need to charge higher rates, which is something we are very wary of.
Thanks for your kind words, Nick.
airnav
Pre-Flight
That's good suggestion. Thanks. We'll work on implementing it.
airnav
Pre-Flight
We do list fuel prices for FBOs that don't subscribe. Over 1500 such FBOs. Are there more FBO that we don't list? Certainly, and we are constantly chasing after new ones. We try to list all FBOs but we realize we fall short. Do you know of anybody that lists all FBOs?
Yes, there is a standard method. Click the "Add Your Business or Service" button at the bottom of every airport page.
Lawreston
En-Route
And if anyone wants to see(and use) Merrymeeting Aviation 08B , or see a larger AirNav photo(it's the 4th image) of the little gem, here it is. (and several others)
HR
HR
Attachments
OtisAir
Line Up and Wait
Bottom line, I like and use Airnav regularly and make decision's on stopping somewhere based on (current) feedback and (current) fuel prices. I think it provides good value to pilots and airport/fbo owners. You've (AirNav Guy) clarified quite a bit in your posts and hopefully folks will take that info and make better use of the service AirNav provides.
Good Job!
ps. plus being from Jawja helps too!
Good Job!
ps. plus being from Jawja helps too!