AIRNAV not publishing fuel prices...

.... of new FBOs. Apparently they will only publish prices for FBOs
that have a subscription with them. Of course they own the web site so
it is their choice to do whatever they like. But it didn't use to be
this way. Previously AIRNAV would encourage reporting fuel prices on
all airports free of charge. I tried to contact AIRNAV regarding this
new policy but have received no replies.

Maybe somebody with the right capabilities could build a mirror web
site so we could publish the fuel prices.

If you know any other web site which publish the fuel prices on all
airports please let us know.

(Victor) wrote in
om:

... of new FBOs. Apparently they will only publish prices for FBOs
that have a subscription with them.

The same holds true of ANY FBO (fuel or repair). I've already noticed
that their lists of airport services is getting smaller and smaller.
It's really sad.

--
John Godwin
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT from email address)

John Godwin wrote:
(Victor) wrote in
om:


... of new FBOs. Apparently they will only publish prices for FBOs
that have a subscription with them.


The same holds true of ANY FBO (fuel or repair). I've already noticed
that their lists of airport services is getting smaller and smaller.
It's really sad.


Fuel prices at most of the airports within 50 miles of me are listed. I'm not
sure that all of them have a "subscription" with Airnav.

In article ,
Victor wrote:
... of new FBOs. Apparently they will only publish prices for FBOs
that have a subscription with them.

Well eventually he'll make it useless enough that someone else
replicates the service. I never did like the way nearby attractions
were cataloged. For example, I tried to add beach access information
for a few coastal Oregon airports, but that never turned up.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

In a previous article, Tyler said:
Fuel prices at most of the airports within 50 miles of me are listed. I'm not
sure that all of them have a "subscription" with Airnav.

Last year, AirNav contacted me (as representative of my flying club) and
gave me a year to pony up some extremely high listing fee or get dropped
from their listing. Checking the fact that in the previous month only one
person had come to our club web site through the AirNav listing (versus
10-20 a day through Google) we declined to be listed.

I suspect your local FBOs are probably in their 1 year waiting period.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
thinks of complaining."

Last year, AirNav contacted me (as representative of my flying club) and
gave me a year to pony up some extremely high listing fee or get dropped
from their listing. Checking the fact that in the previous month only one
person had come to our club web site through the AirNav listing (versus
10-20 a day through Google) we declined to be listed.

Paulo (Airnav's webmaster) did the same with us, and we ponied up.

He has a great website, and I use it almost daily for one thing or another.
I think their listing fee works out to something less than 60 cents a day --
something I was glad to pay for such a valuable service.

For a flying club I suppose only "click-throughs" matter. FBO owners,
however, need to be looking at their listing from an exposure standpoint.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

It's amazing to watch all these people turn against AirNav. I use the site
every time I was doing long distance planning. The FBO list and the
comments were the best part of it. The site is simple, fast and works
well. (for people on slow dialup lines at home or traveling simple is
really good!)

I clicked on "add new fbo" and it listed the basic listing as $20/year.
This certainly isn't going to break the bank at any fbo.

I hope he doesn't start loosing lists as that's one the main uses I have for
the site. That said it costs money to run it and he has to make money
somehow. Maybe this will work for him, maybe not? I certainly hope it
doesn't go away!

-Andrew


Paul Tomblin wrote:

In a previous article, Tyler said:
Fuel prices at most of the airports within 50 miles of me are listed. I'm
not sure that all of them have a "subscription" with Airnav.

Last year, AirNav contacted me (as representative of my flying club) and
gave me a year to pony up some extremely high listing fee or get dropped
from their listing. Checking the fact that in the previous month only one
person had come to our club web site through the AirNav listing (versus
10-20 a day through Google) we declined to be listed.

I suspect your local FBOs are probably in their 1 year waiting period.



--
Andrew Stanley-Jones | "It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
EE, LongEz N87KJ | -- Walt Disney

ASJ wrote:


I hope he doesn't start loosing lists as that's one the main uses I have
for
the site. That said it costs money to run it and he has to make money
somehow. Maybe this will work for him, maybe not? I certainly hope it
doesn't go away!

It is an interesting problem, common to too many "middle man" businesses:
the set of parties that pay isn't exactly the real consumer. In this case,
the site visitors are the users while the businesses pay for the listings.

Economically, it would make more sense for the listings to be free and the
site to be available only to subscribers (or with a "value added" section
available only to subscribers). Those that accrue the most value are
paying for the site in that situation. More, there's no economic incentive
that reduces the site's quality.

Given how much we here like the site, I suspect that this would have been
the smarter move.

As it stands, there's going to be a drop in quality of the site because the
need to pay is going to cause some businesses to balk. The drop in quality
will mean, long term, fewer visitors. That in turn means that businesses
are less likely to pay.

It's a downward spiral from there.

- Andrew

In article ,
ASJ wrote:

It's amazing to watch all these people turn against AirNav.

I'm not against it, it's just a far less valuable resource when the
data is being filtered by who pays to be listed. I don't want to know
just which FBOs and restaurants paid the protection money, I want to
know them all.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

Andrew Gideon wrote:
: Economically, it would make more sense for the listings to be free and the
: site to be available only to subscribers (or with a "value added" section
: available only to subscribers). Those that accrue the most value are
: paying for the site in that situation. More, there's no economic incentive
: that reduces the site's quality.

I sure hope not. It's pretty difficult to find good aviation information without
paying a nominal but extremely annoying "subscription fee." From the cheap-******* user's
point of view, I *despise* having to pay for nominal services for nominal costs... it's a
matter of principle. If they start charging a user subscription fee, then there will
immediately be 5-10 copycat sites vying for the $20/year users. It nominalizes the
system.

I'd venture to say that airnav is the de-factor standard for cross-country
fuel-stop planning. Having a nominal listing fee for fuel price makes good sense for
FBO's... provided it's reasonable. If there's 10 sites like it, they'll all suck. Darwin
takes care, and airnav has "won."

-Cory

--
************************************************** ***********************
* The prime directive of Linux: *
* - learn what you don't know, *
* - teach what you do. *
* (Just my 20 USm$) *
************************************************** ***********************