The big day is here! A very merry Christmas to all our readers, and here’s to a better 2021. We take a quick look back at 2020, but more importantly, a peek forward into the fresh new year to come.
The end of a ridiculous year
2020 has been a ridiculous year for the vast majority of the world. An unprecedented number of new words and phrases have entered the global lexicon, from R-number and fomites to lockdown and preighter, giving us all an education in new concepts to survive.
For Simple Flying, it’s a year we could never have predicted would end quite the way it did. This time last year, we were celebrating our best year to date, and looking forward to a 2020 where we would attend more events, take more flights and continue our upward trajectory as the world’s biggest aviation news site. But 2020 had other ideas.
Instead of flying around the world, we’ve been ‘Zooming’ all over the place from the comfort of our own homes. Amazing trips were canceled, incredible events postponed, and the entire aviation world held its breath to see what would happen next.
But in amongst all this stress, aviation has risen to face its challenges head-on. Airlines have proven their ability to be adaptable, flexible and agile in the face of adversity, and Simple Flying has been honored to be present to tell their stories.
Growing our brand
As a site, we too have risen to the challenges of 2020. Over the course of the year, we’ve continued to grow our audience, striving to provide timely and comprehensive news coverage of the aviation industry worldwide. Our efforts were rewarded with new visitors to the site, twice this year breaking the milestone of a million page views in a day.
While things haven’t been easy, we’ve sent our journalists on field trips whenever it has been safe and realistic to do so. And we’ve listened to hours and hours of conferences, webinars, and interviews to get the inside track on what’s going on in the minds of airline CEOs.
Our YouTube channel has really excelled in 2020. From just over 2,000 subscribers in January, the channel has blossomed to more than 115,000 subscribers. And yes, we did get our silver YouTube Play Button this year!
It was so successful that, in the second half of the year, we added Long Haul by Simple Flying to our repertoire. This channel produces weekly long-form documentary-style videos, and while it doesn’t have the audience of the original channel yet, it’s growing week by week.
Another new addition to the Simple Flying portfolio this year is our popular podcast. Published weekly, we are now up to 47 episodes and have been listened to more than 100,000 times so far! It’s something we’ll definitely continue with in 2021.
Added to this, we’ve revamped our mobile app and have added an advertisement free option to the software to allow our dedicated readers to enjoy our content without interruption.
What’s next?
To say we’re looking forward to 2021 is an understatement. With huge hopes that a vaccine could be the ticket to restarting travel, there is a very bright light at the end of this dark tunnel now. It will take some time for the effects to really filter through to the aviation industry, but we’re confident that by the end of 2021, we’ll be seeing some marked movement of people and planes.
For Simple Flying, we hope to get out and about some more, bringing you exclusive content, trip reports and interviews from all over the world. As always, our content will continue to be delivered in a variety of formats to suit you (have you checked out our TikTok channel yet?) and will continue to be completely free of charge and paywalls.
We want to thank everyone on the Simple Flying team, both on the front line and behind the scenes, who have worked so hard to get where we are today. We want to thank the airlines, airports, media partners and other friends of Simple Flying who have made it possible for us to thrive in this challenging year. But most of all, we want to thank all our dedicated readers for sticking with us and helping us become a little bit better every day.
Happy Christmas to all! Love, the Simple Flying team.
