Unbelievably, it's nearly that time of year again. Christmas, Passover, the Winter Equinox, the Holiday Season ... whatever you call it, it's here in 36 freakin' days!

So if you're like me, any help at all in saving time finding and buying gifts for friends and family is much appreciated.

In which case it's probably worth checking out Flightglobal's festive offers, featuring loads of gift ideas from books, DVDs, and framed cutaways.

And all of these gift ideas are available with a 10% discount up until Christmas with our seasonal sales offer.

Full details here ...

With the whole world seemingly going iPhone app crazy (over 1 billion app downloads to date and counting) we thought we'd get in on the act and build our own one.

The Flightglobal app is now live and available on the iTunes app store (search for "Flightglobal" in the App store on iTunes).

It features several different tabs allowing users to access various types of content from their iPhones.

These include:

• the latest and breaking news stories from anywhere in the world
• the latest aviation trends from Flightglobal's blogs
• the latest video highlights, including exclusive interviews, event reports and aerial displays
• follow our journalists on the road in our Twitter section
• the newest and latest aviation and airline jobs from all over the world
• the option to forward links of your favourite items to your friends via email

Obviously this is the first Flightglobal mobile app that we've developed, but we do intend to produce more applications focused on specific activities and topics within the aviation and aerospace communities.

If you've got a good idea of what you'd like to see in a future app then please drop a comment onto this post and we'll take it on board.

It's that time of year again!

For the third year running, you have a chance to get your best image featured on the front cover of the world renowned Flight International magazine, by uploading your images to our AirSpace galleries.

Below is last year's winner - one of over 1,500 high quality entries we received for the 2008 festive issue:

Last year's winning image by Begemont

The best image from the four categories below will adorn the front cover of Flight International's end of year edition.

The winner will also receive a framed copy of that front cover and £100 (GBP).

The four categories this year are:

• Big Birds
The big beasts in aviation are featured in this gallery, encompassing airliners, cargo aircraft and tankers

• Sleek Jets
From nimble and speedy fighters to the more refined biz jets, only the sleek jets need apply

• Old Flyers
An affectionate hat tip to the rich tapestry of aviation gone by, this category is for the old classics

• General Stars
This category is for the GA leading lights and other general aviation images

Here are the rules ...

And here's a descrption of how you can add your image to AirSpace ...

Good luck!

Twitter have recently introduced the option of creating lists.

These are great for grouping together Twitter accounts around the same subject.

And being the thoughtful bunch we are, we've set up a Flightglobal list which features all of the official FG twitter accounts.

These include our sector channels (such as Headlines, Defence, Airlines), our journalists (such as RunwayGirl, FlightBlogger and TheDEWLine) and other Flightglobal stuff (such as Jobs, Airline Business and StefanthePilot).

See video images from an airport surveillance camera capturing the Sudanese Boeing 707 crash during take-off from Sharjah Airport last week, and watch closely for a falling object, to the left of the screen, shortly before the jet came down.

There are some great videos from last week's NBAA including a tour of the Bombardier Learjet 85's flightdeck and Honeywell's "Tube of Rock" demonstrating how passengers can enjoy HD films, use their iPod and play against their fellow passengers with Play Station games.

Defence editor Craig Hoyle posted a picture story about Pakistan's first of five Saab 2000-based airborne early warning and control aircraft. It has entered final system testing in Sweden, with the work having already demonstrated the capabilities of its integrated self-protection equipment.

FlightBlogger posted an amusing video of singing animals promoting Frontier Airlines that he guarantees will bring a smile to your face.

And the ANA Boeing 787, without engines, was paraded on the Everett flight line last week. Only the tail is painted leaving FlightBlogger wondering whether ANA is getting a new and/or special livery for its first 787? 

Flightglobal is giving you the exclusive chance to have your favourite aviation images featured in an exclusive 2010 calendar.

For the first time, we aim to highlight the best 12 images taken by you and rated by the AirSpace community, a truly unique opportunity for the amateur photographer and a great gift for aviation enthusiasts throughout the world.


To be in with a chance of winning this great prize, you must have uploaded your choice of images to a gallery on AirSpace by Monday 26 October.

Everyone who joins our AirSpace community has their own private gallery and an explanation of how to upload an image can be found here.

The winners will be chosen by a panel of judges from the Flightglobal team and will be selected from the top rated images on AirSpace as well as from AirSpace's image of the week competition, which is featured each week on page 3 of Flight International magazine.

Each selected photographer will win a £100 as well as a free copy of the calendar, with the calendars being on sale in the Flightglobal shop.

For those that miss out don't worry as we will be running our annual Flight International front cover competition straight after this competition ends.

Book your place now for this year's Pilot Best Practice & Crew Management event in London focusing on pilots and helping them perform at their best for their airline, passengers while reducing cost and improving safety.

Some of the Flightglobal team jetted off to Orlando at the weekend to bring you all the latest the latest news, videos, blogs, twitter updates and images from NBAA this week. Check the dedicated channel NBAA 09 for all the coverage.

 John Croft was suitably tickled by a psychedelic interlude while heading to make a connection at Detroit's Metropolitan Airport.

In a post on blog As the Cro(ft) Flies, he says: "I took the underground connector and discovered what I think might be Michigan's best kept secret -- a pyschedelic show that accompanies you for nearly a quarter of a mile as you ride the people-mover through the tunnel. I liked it so much I rode back and forth several times, and still made my connection."

See this great image of the Red Arrows, and while you marvel, why not consider uploading your best images to appear in the 2010 Flightglobal calendar by 26 October.

So Mike, I've babysat your editorship of Flightglobal for a week, writes Airline Business editor Mark Pilling. Thanks for the experience. No, seriously, I enjoyed it.

I would have liked to drive the news side a little harder, but like most of us these days I don't get to down tools on my day job (s) and concentrate on just the one thing.

I got lucky because the news did flow, as I noted in earlier blogs. That will mean traffic during the week should easily have gone past 1.4 million visits and could have nudged 1.5 million. Now that's not far off the Flightglobal record.

I won't claim any credit for that. It's simply a function of how broad and deep Flightglobal is becoming in terms of content. It's frankly big.

I've learnt a lot: how your team works (hard) and how the IT development team works (still a bit of a mystery I've got to admit). I've also seen a few of the cracks we need to fill to improve the site - but I am sure you are well, well aware of them already.

One of the biggest things for me about Flightglobal is understanding where to focus our efforts. Mike has got a pretty good idea I know, but my week at Flightglobal has shown me how tough that is to get a handle on.

Mike I'm glad it's your job rather than mine to get to grips with.

But after a week keeping your chair warm you know more than ever that I'll be keeping the Flightglobal faith.

Good bye but not good night - Mark

OK I'm beginning to get the hang of this web editing lark, writes stand-in Flightglobal editor Mark Pilling.

At least in the sense that I feel what it is Mike Targett, your favourite aviation web editor, feels when nothing is quite happening fast enough, nothing is quite working properly, your team is busting a gut to get a move on but being weighed down by the weight of "stuff" that simply needs doing all the time on Flightglobal. It's like swimming through mud.

Phew I've got that off my chest.

So what has been happening?

Well a lot has been around planning for how we will present our coverage of the ALTA Latin Airline Leaders Forum (next week) and then NBAA (the week after). That means preparing web landing pages to host all of our terrific stories, videos, blogs, Twitter feeds etc from these events.

Around that we've got journalists at the annual meeting of the Arab carriers, the introduction of Egyptair to the Star Alliance (those entail trips to Jeddah and Cairo for lucky Graham Dunn of Airline Business fame) and the European Regions Airline Association (Interlaken I recall).

A great news story today on Flightglobal was Max Kingsley-Jones hauling a nugget from his recent interview with Emirates airline chief Tim Clark on the carrier's thoughts on the 747-8 (no thanks says Tim) and an enhanced 777 (yes please says Tim).

One day to go - come back Mike all is forgiven!

Well today was kind of half in the chair and half in my "normal" Airline Business chair as there has been a lot of preparation going on for next week's ALTA Latin American Airline Leaders Forum, writes stand-in Flightglobal editor Mark Pilling.

In a couple of days we will put up a landing page full of Latin airline material plus the Airline Business Dailies that we will produce for the forum.

The half of the Flightglobal chair I occupied today was dominated by metal news. By that I mean stories that feature new aircraft metal:

* The continuation of Boeing's 747-8 delay news

* The roll out of Gulfstream's G250

* The first flight of Lufthansa's first Airbus A380.

I think the picture I found to illustrate Mike Targett's chair is from Big Brother. Pretty cool isn't it. Shame it isn't really the Flightglobal editor's chair - now there's a thought.