The Wonders of Airliners.net

(MoneyWatch)  There are plenty of discussion forums, blogs, and websites that can give you more information on the airline industry, but when it comes to sheer volume of information, it's tough to beat Airliners.net. Though this site may best be known for its photo database, it has some very heavily-trafficked discussion forums as well.

Personally, I tend to keep an eye on the Civil Aviation forum. While a lot of good information does come through, it's important to keep in mind that there is a lot of misinformation, speculation, and downright incorrect assertions on there as well. Let's take a look.

Since I wrote this before I left on vacation, I can only go off the posts that were there on April 25. If you go back today, there will be a completely different set of posts, but they tend to fall into the same types of categories.

The Unconfirmed Rumor It always amazes me how quickly rumors spread through airline employees. And there are plenty of them on Airliners.net trying to confirm what may be true. Here's one about US Airways and United merging. Usually this will be followed by some comments supporting the rumor, some comments saying the poster is an idiot, and some comments saying it's impossible.

The News Update When a route change comes out, someone's product is changing, a merger has been announced, or just about anything else happens, someone is always on top of it. Here's one about some Frontier schedule changes. This will usually be followed by discussion of either how stupid or how brilliant the move is.

The Big Picture Question Often these will come from teenagers who are just getting started, and other times it's just from someone who just doesn't know the industry well enough, but usually they're somewhat naive. Here's one asking why airlines can't just charge a profitable fare. Long essays will almost always follow this type of comment, and you'll get a mix of very thoughtful, interesting answers combined with basic, inaccurate responses.

The Historical Question Fairly often, you'll see people post questions or comments about something that happened long ago. Who knows how these questions pop into people's heads, but they tend to be some of my favorites. Here's a discussion of Southwest's 727 that operated more than 20 years ago. Incredibly, someone always has an answer to these questions.

The Duplicate Thread For some reason, the regulars at Airliners.net think that every single person who creates a post should do an exhaustive check to make sure that the topic hasn't been discussed before. Now, it's true that everyone should do a simple search to double check, but that doesn't always work. Sometimes people are nice in pointing to the other thread, and sometimes they're not.

The New Livery Possibly my favorite type of post is the new livery post. If someone has a special scheme out there, it will be caught on camera and posted here very quickly. Here's one on Japan Airlines' new Ecojet. This is always followed by someone saying they love it, someone saying they hate it, and someone finding a similar livery and claiming that the airline copied it.

There are probably more post types that I'm forgetting here. (Let me know your personal favorites in the comments.) I don't post on Airliners.net too often, but when I do, it's under the name Pgtravel.