After some middle-of-the-night self reflection, punctuated by the largely negative comments on my 18 May posting regarding Lufthansa's 747-8I and its slight delivery slip, I decided to delete the posting early Saturday morning. I know that doesn't erase the fact that the posting did exist for several days and was probably read far and wide.
While I still would have taken pictures of documents in the cockpit (in part because I can't see that well and take pictures of everything that looks to be mildly interesting), using those pictures in a blog post and taunting the hard-working PR folks at Boeing (who went out of there way to bring me into the fold during my recent trip to Everett) was ill-conceived, and I ask that readers take it as a one-off. After much thought, I did not want such a posting to remain part of the FlightBlogger archives, though I could certainly be wrong about that too.
Several factors contributed to a chain of events that led to the posting. One is that I hadn't thought about the serious and comprehensive nature of the house that Mr. Ostrower built - FlightBlogger. When Jon was employed here, Boeing was covered 24/7/365. I never had the need to consider what he was up to or even to read his blog for that matter. Boeing was covered and I was free to do other jobs in the business aviation, safety, avionics, special features and many other worlds that Flight covers. There was more than enough work to do without tracking what my trusted colleagues were up to.
With Jon gone however, I was asked to fill a new role as FlightBlogger contributor, without preparing myself for the very special offering that he developed. It certainly isn't your everyday run of the mill blog. I get that now. Maybe I thought I had to make a splash - my own mark that would distinguish my "reporting" from Jon's. Readers and Boeing quickly let me know that they weren't in the market for that brand of blogging. That's fantastic feedback to have, even if it hurts.
It didn't help that mental fatigue from an intense week at a business aviation show in Geneva, left me in no condition to sit down the next day to post a supposed tongue-in-cheek entry into FlightBlogger. I should have demanded a fews days off.
In the end though, I made the post and I must take the heat. While I don't shy away from reporting news even when it will be unpleasant for me or the people I'm covering, no one stood to gain from the Lufthansa 747-8I blog posting. FlightBlogger readers do indeed deserve better.
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