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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.

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. 

Now I know why I liked magazines so much! writes stand-in editor of Flightglobal Mark Pilling.

You get say 40 pages to fill and when you filled them with good stuff you say job done, off to press it goes and you read the result.

Flightglobal is like having an infinite number of pages to produce, they are all instantly open to being updated and you never reach the deadline.

So where do you start editing a never ending conveyor belt?

After one of those scrums with the IT folk where I doubt I added much value I got down to a good old-fashioned news meeting.

That revealed that Niall O'Keeffe was preparing a story on the P&W GTF engine for the Chinese regional airliner. That made the lead slot on Flightglobal yesterday afternoon.

Another nice story was the context David Learmount put around the Day of Action European pilots were holding to highlight their concerns around flight time duty limitations. This is what Flightglobal journalists do so well.

Behind the basic news agenda Flightglobal has oceans of content that needs updating, moving around, highlighting etc etc. There are videos to edit and post, forums to monitor, blogs to write and a host of special features to present.

Some of the updates yesterday and today are:

* Mary Kirby and Jon Ostrower at the World Airline Entertainment Association - LIVE

* Flightglobal's new image shop is now OPEN FOR BUSINESS

* Visit the Airline Business blog and this special landing page for videos from the World Low Cost Airlines Congress last week in Barcelona

...Mark Pilling, the editor of Airline Business.

Hello All. I'm standing in for Flightglobal's Mike Targett this week as he takes a well-earned break (that's me on the right with the specs with Enrique Cueto the CEO of LAN at last year's Latin Airline Leaders Forum).

I will be the third "guest" editor of Flightglobal after my illustrious colleague Murdo Morrison, the editor of Flight International, and none other than Sir Richard Branson.

It's a busy week as I prepare for next week's ALTA Latin Airline Leaders Forum in Cartagena, Colombia.

We'll see how the week's news agenda unfolds, but today look out for our take on the action day that involves Europe's pilot unions and associations and we have some breaking news on the engine front.

Other features will be some advance stories for the NBAA business aviation show taking place from 19 October in Orlando and I've got to plug my team's excellent coverage of the World Low Cost Airlines Congress last week.

Plenty of video, Twitter and blog coverage in there for your viewing pleasure.

Wish me luck!

This weekend is your last chance to vote in the Flightglobal Achievement Awards.

Voting so far has been fierce, with over 5,000 votes already received.

All the categories are still in the balance - the nominees leading each category have changed places several times already as the voting has rippled around the internet via Twitter, email and numerous company intranets.

So if you haven't already done so - get your votes in now.

Voting closes at Midnight on 4 October.

Vote now

We're pleased to announce the launch of a new image service, which allows visitors to buy photos and reprints from Flightglobal's unique 100-year image archive.

The Flightglobal Image Store features thousands of historical and modern images, including our extensive technical cutaway drawings.

The store features lots of options for potential shoppers to purchase images in their preferred format and style, whether it's on canvas, framed or even as a jigsaw.

The cost of each product is automatically defined based on the options selected but prices start from just £3.99 GBP + P&P for a 15x10cm unframed photo (multi currency is also supported).

All photos are printed on professional grade Fuji Crystal Archive Photographic Paper for clear and sharp images.

The sizing options are based on the resolution of the hosted image. So for example, the maximum size (61x51cm) is only available if the image itself is of a high enough quality to do the reprint justice.

It's an exciting new service which finally allows Flightglobal visitors to buy Cutaway posters and reprints, which is something they've been requesting for some time.

We're uploading more images every day, but if there's something you can't currently find let us know and we'll endeavour to upload it as a priority.

The Flightglobal Image Store launches with some initial galleries listings, with more due to be added over the coming months. They are:

• Cutaways 
• Pre 1914
• 1930's Civil
• 1930's Military
• 1939-45 
• Post WWII
• Experimental Prototypes
• Air Races
• Modern Aircraft
• Flight Collection

A bit of information regarding the site outage that affected Flightglobal on Friday - Saturday last week.

An incident hit our central systems around 3.40pm GMT on Friday and took much of Reed Business Information's IT infrastructure down (RBI is the publishing house for Flightglobal). Even our email was down and we were forced to resort to Tweeting messages regarding the problems in order to communicate with the Flightglobal community.

The Infrastructure team worked through Friday night into Saturday morning to get everything back up, and the site returned to normal at around 10am GMT on Saturday. Which is pretty good going considering how many websites, networks and systems they had to get back up and running.

We do have redundancy in the system designed to keep the main parts of the site up during an incident such as this but such was the severity of the problems that those rerouting processes themselves were affected.

You can see the impact the outage had on Flightglobal from the traffic graph below (hourly page views), with traffic virtually drying up instantly, and not coming back properly till Saturday morning.

The good news is that this is about as bad a scenario as you can image for a website publisher, but we recovered pretty rapidly and have learnt many lessons from what up until now had been a theoretical situation.

Due to unprecedented demand, the deadline to nominate for the Flightglobal Achievement awards has been extended until 19 August 2009.

Nominate now ...

The all-new Flightglobal Achievement Awards are your chance to nominate and vote for the best aviator, the best innovator and the best leader in the industry today.

The awards also recognise the stars of the future, with a special award for the Engineering Student of the Year, sponsored by Boeing.

We want you to nominate the people and teams that you feel deserve recognition.

Then we'll invite all Flightglobal visitors to vote on the shortlist chosen by Flightglobal editors and distinguished independent judges.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony at the Dubai air show in November, with flightglobal.com, Flight International and Flight Daily News there to cover the event as it happens.

We are delighted to welcome four prestigious sponsors for these awards. Along with Boeing, these are AJ Walter Aviation, Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies and Bombardier Aerospace.

So from hero pilots to brilliant entrepreneurs, from pioneers of new technology to outstanding leaders of men and women, this is your chance to tell us who most deserves the praise of the aviation world. Prepare to give them your recognition.

Nominate now ...

Sponsored by:

AJ Walter Aviation

Boeing

Bombardier