#A380CAT, after landing an EA-6B on an aircraft carrier – Photos: David Parker Brown
My apologies. My subject might be a bit misleading. Or maybe totally misleading. One might even call it a fib. Well mostly a fib. I do have a cat. His name is Harley, but goes by #A380CAT. Although he might tell you otherwise, he has never flown or landed a plane… he mostly just eats and sleeps.
I do have “some actual legit stuff”, which is really a yearly review. Yes, yes, everyone does a yearly review this time of year, and every year I start to get annoyed after seeing about 100 different versions or so. Then I become a hypocrite and write one for AirlineReporter. I figure since I am going to look at the yearly data anyhow, why not share? But I figured if I added some crazy cat stuff to the story, maybe it would make it more interesting. Keep on reading to see our year end stats and also more of my cute kitty cat! Here we go…
#A380CAT had an important business meeting, so he classed it up with a tie and Delta’s Premium Select. BYOCN – Photos: David Parker Brown
TOP 5 STORIES WRITTEN & READ IN 2019
#1 What’s so special about the Delta Airbus A330-900neo?
#2 Wamos Who? Long-haul economy on “Norwegian”
#3 Comparing British Airways World Traveller Plus 787 vs A380
#4 Hawaiian A321neo first class review
#5 Checking out the Virgin America Influence on Alaska Airlines
Hot damn! Even though I run this airline blog dog and pony show, my stories rarely make the top read lists. This year, two of mine made it! We have a nice, friendly competition between the writers on who has the most read stories, but really that number isn’t super important. I care more about who the people are, how they engage with the story, and if it makes an impact in some way. However, it does feel nice to see my stories on this list. Honestly, I am not quite sure why my Delta A330-900neo story is #1. I just thought it was a good excuse to go hang out at the Seattle airport for a bit, chill with Delta, see a few media folks, and go on (but not fly in) a new plane type for me.
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Not that the other stories weren’t great as well, but I was really happy to see Blaine’s Wamos story on the list. It is one of those stories that I think is super interesting, but often those types of stories seem to fall between the cracks and aren’t very popular.
The #A380CAT thought I was going to Photoshop him into a plane photo, but instead he ended up in a photo with the real Thomas Cook (via Creative Commons). Boy oh boy, was he surprised.
TOP 5 STORIES READ, BUT NOT WRITTEN IN 2019
#1 Who has wider seats? The A320 or 737? (2010)
#2 The Lockheed L1011 Returns to the Skies (2017)
#3 Flying SAS economy plus (2018)
#4 Flight Review of Air France Premium Economy (2015)
#5 Thomas Cook, an airline you have probably never heard of (2016)
I actually got a little sad seeing the Thomas Cook story. It is too bad it went under this year, but I am happy to see people wanted to learn more about the airline. I am also always excited to see when a story talking about the L1011 makes any of the popular lists.
Don’t ask. Seriously don’t – Photos: David Parker Brown
TOP 10 COUNTRIES READING OUR STUFF
Okay. Before continuing, I feel like I should say something about the photo above. I had a vision, spent a lot of time trying to make that vision work, but it ended up looking like some creepy cat Frankenstein airplane photo. I was in too deep and couldn’t just ditch it. Now, if you have the urge to point out that I am using an out of date United image, I am going to point out that I overlaid my cat’s mouth on top of said photo, so let’s just call it even. Moving on…
#1 United States
#2 United Kingdom
#3 Canada
#4 Australia
#5 German
#6 India
#7 France
#8 Singapore
#9 Netherlands
#10 Japan
We have had at least one reader from every county in the world… except one. Can you guess the country with zero readers?
After last photo, playing it a bit safer with this one – Photos: David Parker Brown
TOP 10 CITIES CHECKING OUT OUR AVGEEK GOODNESS:
#1 Chicago
#2 New York
#3 London
#4 Los Angeles
#5 Seattle
#6 San Francisco
#7 Sydney
#8 Washington, DC
#9 Dallas
#10 Toronto
Well, I wasn’t expecting that. Our list of cities has been pretty consistent over the years. Seattle normally takes the lead. I remember one year that Seattle, Everett, and Renton all were on the Top 10 list (where most of the Boeing planes are made). Without any actual evidence, I am just going to assume that we are now a daily read at Boeing’s HQ in Chicago.
For fun, I also looked up where Airbus’ main cities ended up on the list. Toulouse (head office) is #238, Leiden (registered HQ) is #1688, Mobile (US assembly plant) is #619, and Hamburg (my favorite Airbus town) is at #55. I know there are more cities, but I am ready to move on.
Hello kitty! He and his “pal” Squirrely (he is not good at naming) are super interested in what is coming next – Photos: David Parker Brown
RANDOM STUFF THAT I FOUND INTERESTING (and you may too)
- 47% of you used desktops, 45% used mobile phones, and 8% used tablets.
- Of the mobile users, 44% of you used iPhones. The rest of you should probably upgrade to iPhones :).
- 48% of you used Chrome, 33% Safari, 7% IE, and 0.19% used Amazon Silk, which is a new one for me.
- 282 of you found us by searching on AOL. I am not judging, just stating a fact.
- 543 people got to our site from Pinterest. My wife has explained this site to me many times and I still don’t get it. I guess thanks for pinning us with interest?
- Of those of you who started reading this story, 1.3% are still reading, 73% are scrolling down just to see the rest of the cats pics, and 13.78% of you closed your browser after seeing that weird cat mouth over airline photos (let’s pretend somehow that all added up to 100%).
#A380CAT wants to go where Rolly McRollerson goes! Sorry cat… – Photo: David Parker Brown
INSERT POSITIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT 2020 HERE
I think this is the part where I say things like “2020 is going to be bigger and better than ever!!!” How about I am just very happy with what we have been able to accomplish over the last decade. We have such a great team of writers (who are really more than writers, but friends), who have some wonderful ideas and a strong passion, so I am pretty sure we will continue to create some fun content! When we have some good content, we will post it. When we don’t, we won’t. Or maybe I can just post a photo of #A380CAT as a filler… we will see.
I want to make AirlineReporter a welcoming place for those who have a passion for airlines and aviation. One can share their passion by writing about airplanes, leaving comments, reading the stories, or do what I mostly do and just look at the pretty pictures!
Seriously though, a huge thanks for reading and keeping us motivated… cheers to what’s next!
Nice quirky sense of humour, David!
I love it! 🙂
So which country is the one where no one reads AirlineReporter? N.Korea? S.Sudan? Eritrea? Turkmenistan? Please, tell.