Flight magazine online archive

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Member for

16 years 7 months

Posts: 5,927

The Flight magazine online archive has now been inaccessible for several weeks. If one tries to access it, the message received is as follows:

'As part of the flightglobal.com relaunch, the Flight magazine archive is undergoing maintenance to transition to our new web platform. It will be back online as soon as possible.'

Does anyone know when it will become accessible again and, perhaps more importantly, whether it still will be free at the point of access after the flightglobal.com relaunch?

Original post

Member for

16 years 7 months

Posts: 5,927

Thank you, Lyffe. In view of what's posted there, the future doesn't look too rosy!

Member for

11 years 3 months

Posts: 1,299

I was fearing the worst given the length of time the site has been down! Shades of what has happened on here sadly. Hope it's back soon and remains a free resource.

Member for

18 years 1 month

Posts: 2,123

Avion: as no-one wanted them I just recycled my old Flights thinking that they were all on line anyway.

Laurence

Member for

16 years 7 months

Posts: 5,927

Sometimes I think that it's the brave new digital world coming back to bite us. I can't help but fear that when the rest of us have disposed of our hard copy periodicals and suchlike, those who haven't, and have scanned theirs, will realise the monopoly they have and seek to exploit that commercially. I'm glad that I have a large attic and a wife who doesn't go there!

p.s. Laurence, I'd have relieved you of your back copies of Flight if not for the fact, as already mentioned, that Switzerland is a long way away.

Member for

18 years 1 month

Posts: 2,123

Yes Monsieur Ancien, I wish you could have had them. I've also advertised the various journals I still have on our local Ebay-style site for giving away free. Not a single offer. But even if one should scan them all for oneself (maybe take a life-time) there's no guarantee that our descendants will be able to read the media.

Laurence

Member for

19 years 9 months

Posts: 1,777

Explains why my bookmarked pages were not working!!

Fingers crossed!!

Member for

16 years 7 months

Posts: 5,927

No change here. Access the site and still there's the same message as I mentioned in my original post.

Member for

16 years 7 months

Posts: 5,927

I contacted Flight Global. I received a response this morning. It was as follows:

'As part of the FlightGlobal relaunch we had to re-platform the site and unfortunately the Flight PDF archive was not compatible with the new software so we had to take it down for maintenance and development. The archive will be back online soon, however I can't give you a date for this or tell you in what form it will be in. We will let our readers know as soon as the archive is back online.'

 

Member for

11 years 3 months

Posts: 1,299

Well, it is good of them to answer and give a reason for the problem. Hopefully it will return soon and in a form not too dissimilar to what we were used to! Thanks for asking, AA.

Member for

16 years 7 months

Posts: 5,927

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

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 2,598

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.

Member for

11 years 3 months

Posts: 1,299

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

 

Member for

11 years 3 months

Posts: 1,299

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.

Member for

16 years 7 months

Posts: 5,927

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!

Member for

16 years 7 months

Posts: 5,927

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.

Member for

11 years 3 months

Posts: 1,299

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.

Member for

11 years 3 months

Posts: 1,299

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