African Pilot
African Pilot is a monthly general aviation magazine published in South Africa.
History and profile
The idea of starting an aviation magazine which had a completely new approach to the coverage of all aviation matters in South Africa was conceived at AirVenture at Oshkosh, in July 2001.Initially four names were reserved: African Planes -thought to be too much like the ‘wild open plains’ of Africa. African Flyer - this name was too close to the title of an existing magazine. Wings over Africa - at that time this title was owned in Namibia by another magazine and African Pilot. As soon as the branding had been established, the slogan ‘Serious about flying’ was added to the logo in order to ensure that the market clearly understood the proposed magazine was about aviation.
A publishing company, Wavelengths 10 (Pty) Ltd was established and the name African Pilot was registered as a South African Trade Mark. Much background work went into the production of the first edition launched as the December 2001/ January 2002 magazine which had a beautiful picture of an ex-South African T-6 Harvard on the cover.
During 2002, the launch year, seven African Pilot magazines were produced in relatively small numbers and the size remained at 52 pages.The magazine continued to find popularity in the busy publishing world and as advertisers came on board the quantity of printed copies increased and through 2003 the magazine’s page count grew steadily.In May 2005 the first ‘perfect bound’ edition was produced with 100 pages and the print order had increased to 7 000 copies.
African Pilot was accepted as a fully-fledged member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) South Africa in June 2006 and at the same time the magazine joined the Magazine Publishers’ Association of South Africa. As magazine sales increased and new technology became available, African Pilot’s page count increased to 116 pages, where it is today and the print order went up to 9 000 copies. However, despite the downturn in the global economy late in the previous decade, in April 2010 African Pilot became the first African aviation publication to launch a FREE full electronic version downloadable from the magazine’s website: www.africanpilot.co.za. This development resulted in the overall readership being increased considerably.
At this time African Pilot had an audited distribution in the region of 7 000 paper editions per month and 6754 registered readers, a figure that continues to grow every week, of the electronic version.
A downloadable version of the magazine for iPad and Android devices was tested at the start of 2012 and the reading of African Pilot on such devices is now in operation – another first for aviation publishing in South Africa. This means that African Pilot is no longer purely a southern African aviation magazine, but is read all over the world by a wide variety of aviation practitioners and enthusiasts. To complement the magazine, each Monday an African Pilot newsletter is published. This contains news, not only of South African aviation ‘happenings,’ recently past, present and future, but also covers other aviation news from around the world. The newsletter is sent by e-mail to aviation enthusiasts around South Africa and the world and is passed on over and over again.The entire circulation probably exceeds 50,000 readers worldwide.
The company’s offices are situated in Kyalami in Midrand part of the Johannesburg region. Presently the company employs nine people and has a further 15 or so freelance writers and photographers.