AirNav Comments Down?

Geico266

Geico266

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Jun 15, 2008
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19,136
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Husker Nation, NE
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Display name:
Geico
I have not been able to add comments on FBOs, etc., for a couple of weeks. I have tried contacting the admin with no joy. Anyone else having problems?
 
Do you mean that you don't see the FBO on the airport page? Or do you not see a button to add a comment on the FBO page? Or you did all that and typed your comments and they simply haven't appeared yet?
 
mine show up after moderation, which can take 3-4 days depending on how caustic they are!

J/K. But they will not post really negative ones, and they will remove comments that fbos complain about.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Do you mean that you don't see the FBO on the airport page? Or do you not see a button to add a comment on the FBO page? Or you did all that and typed your comments and they simply haven't appeared yet?
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When I try to add comments they don't show up.

These were all positive comments.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Well, since they are all moderated - Maybe the dude just went on vacation or something. :dunno:
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Bingo! We have a winner!


I just got a nice response from Gina, AirNav saying the entire crew was attending a convention all last week. They are now just starting to wade through the comments and should be caught up by Friday.

You are good Cheesehead! :thumbsup:
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
mine show up after moderation, which can take 3-4 days depending on how caustic they are!
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Right. We try to get to them in 1-2 business days.

J/K. But they will not post really negative ones, and they will remove comments that fbos complain about.
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NOT TRUE. Are you saying that from personal experience or hearsay?
 
Hey, AirNav guy- appreciate your input here, love using your site, especially the fuel-planning function.

Is it policy now to completely remove any reference to fuel price for an FBO which used to have a paid listing, but no longer does? Example: T82 (Gillespie County, Texas) - I no longer see any reference to the fuel price there; have called them and they confirm still having fuel, but tell me that they no longer advertise on Airnav.

I know there are lots of places that have fuel prices and basic info listed, and are not paying to advertise. I can understand removing all "prominence" features when they stop buying them (fair's fair), but deleting all existence of the fuel prices sort of hurts your usefulness as a resource.

What say you?
 
SCCutler said:
Is it policy now to completely remove any reference to fuel price for an FBO which used to have a paid listing, but no longer does? Example: T82 (Gillespie County, Texas) - I no longer see any reference to the fuel price there; have called them and they confirm still having fuel, but tell me that they no longer advertise on Airnav.

I know there are lots of places that have fuel prices and basic info listed, and are not paying to advertise. I can understand removing all "prominence" features when they stop buying them (fair's fair), but deleting all existence of the fuel prices sort of hurts your usefulness as a resource.

What say you?
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What Spike said!

I *almost* started an FBO myself, and after my "home" FBO disappeared from AirNav entirely when they decided they had to cut spending and dropped their "ad" from Airnav, I realized that they treat FBO's who were never their customer to begin with better than they treat those who were their customers. Conclusion? I was not ever going to buy an ad on airnav, because they'd handcuff me.

Bad policy, IMO, and like Spike says, it really limits Airnav's usefulness as a planning tool when they simply exclude fuel stops that still exist.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
mine show up after moderation, which can take 3-4 days depending on how caustic they are!

J/K. But they will not post really negative ones, and they will remove comments that fbos complain about.
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You are posting on a site that is financed out of advertising revenue from the FBOs. Are you suprised ?
 
flyingcheesehead said:
What Spike said!
Bad policy, IMO, and like Spike says, it really limits Airnav's usefulness as a planning tool when they simply exclude fuel stops that still exist.
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It's not completely Airnav's fault. There are FBOs that refuse to participate in any way. There are a few here in Colorado with that attitude. I've called and asked why (the FBO) and the response is rather rude. Essentially, they don't want the spam cans, only the bizjets and charters (no, not Signature). Which means I have no way to know if there's an FBO at one of these airports when I'm doing flight planning. I'm not their target market, so they don't care if I know about them or not.

Other FBOs have asked that comments be removed after a shorter period of time than the airnav standard.
 
SCCutler said:
\Is it policy now to completely remove any reference to fuel price for an FBO which used to have a paid listing, but no longer does? Example: T82 (Gillespie County, Texas) - I no longer see any reference to the fuel price there; have called them and they confirm still having fuel, but tell me that they no longer advertise on Airnav.
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Not at all. T82 had a listing that Air BP was paying for. Air BP no longer pays it, and the FBO manager says he did not want to pay himself, too expensive. So we pulled down the Air BP paid listing, and will convert it to a free listing. However, we have over 400 Air BP listings that were impacted and are working through a backlog. We started from the busier airports and are working our way down the list. T82 is somewhere down the list, along with many smaller airports, you know, those with numbers in their identifiers.

Interestingly, at T82 that same FBO manager pays for a listing for his car rental business on AirNav. But not for the FBO. Strange.

I know there are lots of places that have fuel prices and basic info listed, and are not paying to advertise. I can understand removing all "prominence" features when they stop buying them (fair's fair), but deleting all existence of the fuel prices sort of hurts your usefulness as a resource.
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Believe me, we know, and we try to list every FBO. We're not perfect, though.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I *almost* started an FBO myself, and after my "home" FBO disappeared from AirNav entirely when they decided they had to cut spending and dropped their "ad" from Airnav, I realized that they treat FBO's who were never their customer to begin with better than they treat those who were their customers. Conclusion? I was not ever going to buy an ad on airnav, because they'd handcuff me.
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Your "home" FBO disappeared when their paid listing expired. At that point it goes to the end of the queue of FBOs to be worked for a free listing. Surely it is back by now, isn't it?
 
murphey said:
It's not completely Airnav's fault. There are FBOs that refuse to participate in any way.
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The FBO doesn't have to "participate" to be listed. But when they do choose to "participate" and then decide later to not "participate" they are completely deleted. That is the problem, and is solely Airnav's fault, with one exception... And that is Atlantic Aviation, which sued Airnav to remove them entirely (they were getting a lot of bad comments). But now, they're back. :dunno:
 
airnav said:
Your "home" FBO disappeared when their paid listing expired. At that point it goes to the end of the queue of FBOs to be worked for a free listing. Surely it is back by now, isn't it?
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They came back when they started paying again. :dunno:

It seems that if you need to manually create the free listings, that you need some additional automation added to your back end.
 
Trapper John said:
Pretty easy to pick on a service that's largely free.
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... because FBO's pay for it, thus, indirectly we are paying for it when we buy from those FBO's. It's not like this is a non-profit entity or something that someone's doing out of their garage. It's a business.

Spike's got a valid issue that I agree with. I'm trying to make that known, and I hope airnav improves because of it. It is a good resource, for the most part - Does that mean it can't be even better?
 
flyingcheesehead said:
... because FBO's pay for it, thus, indirectly we are paying for it when we buy from those FBO's.
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And I suppose you're also indirectly paying for the lineboy's ugly body art, since he got it with his last paycheck. I guess that could go in an airnav FBO comment...then perhaps the comment doesn't get posted fast enough which generates yet another thing to razz airnav about...it's a vicious circle.
 
airnav said:
Not at all. T82 had a listing that Air BP was paying for. Air BP no longer pays it, and the FBO manager says he did not want to pay himself, too expensive. So we pulled down the Air BP paid listing, and will convert it to a free listing. However, we have over 400 Air BP listings that were impacted and are working through a backlog. We started from the busier airports and are working our way down the list. T82 is somewhere down the list, along with many smaller airports, you know, those with numbers in their identifiers.
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Ah! Makes good sense - thanks for clarifying that for me.

Now, next logical question: why did Air BP withdraw?

airnav said:
Interestingly, at T82 that same FBO manager pays for a listing for his car rental business on AirNav. But not for the FBO. Strange.
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Well, they are the only FBO on the field... but not the only car rental agency in town..

airnav said:
Believe me, we know, and we try to list every FBO. We're not perfect, though.
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None of us is... but you all do provide a useful service, and for that, I say, "Thanks!"
 
Trapper John said:
And I suppose you're also indirectly paying for the lineboy's ugly body art, since he got it with his last paycheck. I guess that could go in an airnav FBO comment...then perhaps the comment doesn't get posted fast enough which generates yet another thing to razz airnav about...it's a vicious circle.
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Never mind, airnav is perfect and I shouldn't even want them to improve. :rolleyes:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Never mind, airnav is perfect and I shouldn't even want them to improve. :rolleyes:
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There's an app for that:

4_Kleenex.jpg
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Never mind, airnav is perfect and I shouldn't even want them to improve. :rolleyes:
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Airnav is nothing without the pilots. Don't keep up with the pilots demand and maintain a quality site you'll lose them. Once you lose the pilots you'll lose the revenue from the FBOs.

Airnav may be a "free" site but they are generating revenue and should care about the feedback - which it sounds like they do.
 
jesse said:
Airnav is nothing without the pilots. Don't keep up with the pilots demand and maintain a quality site you'll lose them. Once you lose the pilots you'll lose the revenue from the FBOs.

Airnav may be a "free" site but they are generating revenue and should care about the feedback - which it sounds like they do.
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Well said. :thumbsup:

There's actually some other sites with a nicer presentation, but none have gained the critical mass of pilots that airnav has, IMO. I went and updated my profile on airnav today, and based on what was in there, I've had my account there for at least 10 years!

Even now, with the fuel prices available in ForeFlight, I still check the Airnav "great deals" report before I go on a long trip, and I use both to come up with my final plan. If airnav doesn't continue to improve and loses pilots to other sites or to apps like ForeFlight, it'd go down the tubes faster than MySpace.
 
My decision to use or not use a particular airport is heavily influenced by the comments for the FBOs listed in AirNav. If a FBO does not allow comments I am very unlikely to stop there unless I do not have a reasonable alternative. I am determined to avoid FBOs that do not treat GA pilots well. However, I think that some of the people who post comments are very petty about nominal charges if they don't buy gas. They forget that FBOs are businesses with bills to pay. I consider AirNav to be an essential tool for flight planning.
 
It is ok to ask AirNav to improve, and I am sure they appreciate those types of comments. But it is the nearly slanderous, unfounded comments that really annoy me. And NO, I have no vested interest in AirNav, I merely have a small "for profit" business that always tries to do things right and yet there are still people that want to complain. If we give something away for free some people still complain and some people even expect if we give something away one time they should get it free every time.

I for one (among many others) greatly appreciate AirNav's service and I appreciate AirNav guy coming on this board to answer their critics and explain their process. He is much more diplomatic when dealing with certain people that I would be.
 
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JOhnH said:
It is ok to ask AirNav to improve, and I am sure they appreciate those types of comments. But it is the nearly slanderous, unfounded comments that really annoy me.
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Whose comments do you find "nearly slanderous" or "unfounded?"

I appreciate that Airnav is free (for us) and the service they provide - Does that mean that I think they're perfect? No. Does that mean I don't want them to improve? No. I had one issue with them, the same one Spike did, and I wanted to make it known that there's more than one person who thinks it's a serious issue, that's all.

I have done things for free in the past as well - And I appreciated those who took the time to offer suggestions for improvement, as I hope they appreciated the service I provided. Hell, I do things for free right now, and I still love hearing comments from fans, be they positive or constructively negative.

:dunno:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Whose comments do you find "nearly slanderous" or "unfounded?"

I appreciate that Airnav is free (for us) and the service they provide - Does that mean that I think they're perfect? No. Does that mean I don't want them to improve? No. I had one issue with them, the same one Spike did, and I wanted to make it known that there's more than one person who thinks it's a serious issue, that's all.

I have done things for free in the past as well - And I appreciated those who took the time to offer suggestions for improvement, as I hope they appreciated the service I provided. Hell, I do things for free right now, and I still love hearing comments from fans, be they positive or constructively negative.

:dunno:
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Since you asked.....

Kent: Can you make PilotCast's website not a nightmare to navigate? That is my only complaint about your show...the content is awesome, the topics (although riddled with iPad/ForeFlight ads) are perfect, and the Talent on your show is great.

But your site, frankly, sucks. I haven't even gone to the site in ages because of it. As you scroll down, it seems to get narrower and narrower, and the content is just spewing down a single page with no navigation or anything. I assume you didn't design it, because you know better...but you gotta fix it man.
 
SkyHog said:
Since you asked.....

Kent: Can you make PilotCast's website not a nightmare to navigate? That is my only complaint about your show...the content is awesome, the topics (although riddled with iPad/ForeFlight ads) are perfect, and the Talent on your show is great.

But your site, frankly, sucks. I haven't even gone to the site in ages because of it. As you scroll down, it seems to get narrower and narrower, and the content is just spewing down a single page with no navigation or anything. I assume you didn't design it, because you know better...but you gotta fix it man.
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Go again. Yes, we used to have the worst web site outside of Geocities since 1996. ;) But, Bill finally re-did it. Check it out... And I welcome any comments over in the Pilotcast forum here on PoA. :yes:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Go again. Yes, we used to have the worst web site outside of Geocities since 1996. ;) But, Bill finally re-did it. Check it out... And I welcome any comments over in the Pilotcast forum here on PoA. :yes:
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I'll be damned....I take that back. Not bad, man. Much, much better than what you had before.
 
SkyHog said:
I'll be damned....I take that back. Not bad, man. Much, much better than what you had before.
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Man...it HAD been a while since you were there. That switch was made like a year ago... :thumbsup:
 
SkyHog said:
I'll be damned....I take that back. Not bad, man. Much, much better than what you had before.
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Thanks! Still a little plain, but it does the job - And any time we spend on fanciness does take away from the time that we have to bring some neat content... So it's somewhat of a balancing act. ;)
 
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