Forty short years ago, in March 1958, the first issue of AOPA Pilot magazine rolled off the presses and into the hands of our then-70,000 members. In many ways, Volume 1, Number 1 was a landmark event in AOPA's history. It redefined the association's public persona, expanded its political clout, provided an additional source of revenue, and gave members more for the buck. (AOPA membership was $10 a year back then).
AOPA's decision to make its own standalone, full-size, slick monthly magazine appears to have been made in the summer of 1956. The few documents that remain indicate that AOPA's relationship with the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company was changing course at that time.
From AOPA's founding in 1939, Ziff-Davis (Z-D) was a central component of AOPA. In fact, "central" would be too mild a term for the relationship between the two organizations. Under terms of a March 4, 1939, agreement, Ziff-Davis (then the publisher of Popular Aviation, which would become Flying with its January 1943 issue) gave $500, then $1,000, a month to AOPA for start-up expenses. Z-D also gave AOPA advertising space in Popular Aviation and Flying, a monthly editorial slot, and even editorial assistance and office space! In return, AOPA (called "the fliers" in the contract, because AOPA's name had yet to be chosen) endorsed Popular Aviation as its official publication, and thus provided the magazine with more subscribers. Oh, and if "the fliers" couldn't come up with 2,500 members in a year, then Z-D could terminate the agreement.
The first official AOPA publication was simply called "AOPA News," and was a two-page layout in the September 1939 issue of Popular Aviation. Its editor was Gill Robb Wilson, AOPA's first member. Wilson was chosen for the slot because he was not only an author and pilot, but also the director of New Jersey's state aeronautics commission. AOPA was incorporated in New Jersey.
Joseph B. "Doc" Hartranft, Jr., AOPA's first employee, assisted Wilson in writing "AOPA News," and by November 1939 it had expanded into a two-feature layout called the "AOPA Section." The section grew to nine pages by the March 1940 issue of Popular Aviation.
In May 1943, the section was renamed "The AOPA Pilot" — the first appearance of the title in Flying magazine. In May 1948 Hartranft hired Max Karant (see " Farewell, Max," April 1997 Pilot) away from his managing editor job at Flying to be editorial director of "The AOPA Pilot" and AOPA's assistant general manager. In a game of musical chairs, Wilson jumped ship from "Pilot" and became Flying's editor.
"The AOPA Pilot" retained the nine-or-so page length until 1957. That's when the Z-D contract with AOPA — by then renewable at 10-year intervals — was due to expire.
During negotiations in 1956, AOPA said that it wanted the ability to sell advertising on its own, a bigger cut of Flying's subscription revenues, and more editorial space for "The AOPA Pilot." Z-D said "no way," and the die was cast. After learning of AOPA's interest in publishing its own magazine, Z-D's Benjamin G. Davis said that AOPA would never attempt to publish its own magazine "if they were in their right mind."
Dissenting opinions cropped up within AOPA, as well. Here we were, about to throw away a fairly high-profile, low-work load, automatic-revenue-generating vehicle for spreading the word — all for embarking on an unknown future by publishing our own magazine with limited manpower, no advertising sales force and, to be frank, little experience with the full range of tasks required to complete a standalone, full-size magazine that could compete with newsstand publications.
Max Karant served as The AOPA Pilot's first editor, and for the first few issues the magazine was put out by a mere two staffers. Outside agencies did layouts. Except for the editorials and the new products column ("What's New"), all feature articles were submitted by members. A segment of the magazine called "Vox Pilot" was a forum for member opinions and letters. Almost every month, a "Places To Fly" feature ran toward the back of the magazine. The early issues averaged 84 black-and-white pages, with two-color pages thrown in for looks; the covers were four-color.
Then, as now, the principal objectives of AOPA Pilot were to both inform and entertain our members, as well as those additional "pass-along" readers who came across a copy. Early on, the issue of AOPA Pilot's informational persona dwelled on our need to both represent AOPA's policy positions and educate readers about the government initiatives affecting their flying, and to provide articles relating to flying procedures and safety topics. One of the most popular articles in this vein is "Never Again," a first-person, confessional narrative of there-I-was stories of horror and stupidity. "Never Again" has been in every issue of AOPA Pilot, from day one.
The early editorials are amusing to read, because the issues plaguing general aviation 40 years ago — airspace restrictions, airport closures, and an abundance of regulations, to name a few — are the same that trouble us now. And then, as now, AOPA Pilot was the only general aviation magazine that diligently addressed policy matters on a monthly basis. Unlike every other general aviation magazine, Pilot must answer to, and represent, the interests of a wide-ranging constituency in a large number of governmental and regulatory forums.
The first editorial was called "What About Airspace Use, Mr. Pyle?" It was an interview with then-Civil Aeronautics Administrator James T. Pyle. In it, Pyle forecasts increased traffic counts. Karant asked about CAA officials who had been quoted as saying that mandatory IFR above a certain altitude will ultimately be required — even in perfect weather. Pyle said, "[The rules] will probably be somewhat more restrictive than those regulating VFR flight today ... but they will not necessarily be such that it will be necessary to be an instrument pilot as we know it today." Some dialogues never seem to change.
What has changed, however, is the tone of the rhetoric. The magazine's first 20 years were marked by a kind of stridency (well-meaning though it was) that often served to cast AOPA as an extremist organization inextricably bound to an agenda connected to the status quo ante. (A January 1961 editorial titled "The IFR Cult" bemoaned the airlines' new policy of mandatory IFR flying.) To use a cliché, it wasn't so much what we said as how we said it. Even so, a review of the first 10 years of AOPA Pilot serves as a great compendium of the issues that general aviation — and AOPA — have dealt with over the years.
By the mid-1960s, it was clear that AOPA Pilot was here to stay. Now folded into a Publications Division within AOPA, the growing number of editorial and production staffers began putting out an annual buying guide in 1962. A series of hardcover books called "Places to Fly" followed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
By 1974, the magazine had grown to an average of 100 pages per issue, and the first four-color inside pages were introduced. Along the way, the bylines of several famous names in aviation and aviation writing found their way into Pilot's pages: Richard Bach, Martin Caidin, Donald D. Engen, Barry Schiff, and Najeeb Halaby, to name but a few. And in every presidential election year, statements from each of the candidates appeared in the October issues.
Karant stepped down as editor in 1977. Robert I. Stanfield replaced him, and under his editorship the first staff associate editors were hired. This action boosted the level of control over the magazine's contents and substantially raised the editorial quality.
In 1978, AOPA President John L. Baker named Edward G. Tripp as editor of AOPA Pilot. Tripp, former publisher of Air Progress and a Ziff-Davis veteran, added more staff, modernized the look of the magazine with the hiring of Art Davis (another ex-Ziff-Davis-ite who served on Flying as well as Car and Driver) as creative director, and completely changed its editorial voice. In addition to the news and hardware coverage that Pilot always provided, a push was made to identify emerging issues and trends. From 1982 to 1984 the Publications Division published Ultralight Pilot, a magazine that analyzed the dozens of new, uncertified ultralight airplanes then flooding the market. Bad designs were bluntly dissected, and articles warned of a downturn in activity if self-regulation didn't work and if poor safety trends didn't turn around. Two years later ultralight aviation basically tanked.
Several award-winning articles were published by Pilot. One, titled "Satellites Instead" and written by Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill, a Princeton physics professor, posited a future navigation concept in the July 1982 issue. O'Neill called it Triad. Triad would use ground stations, satellites, and onboard transponders to allow airplanes to fly direct, anywhere. "Once the Triad system was established and thoroughly tested, we could shut down the entire existing FAA system — the hundreds of VOR stations, the thousands of ILS installations ..." he wrote. It was a prophetic, seminal work. It would be eight years before GPS, a system very closely resembling the one O'Neill described, would become operational.
There were others. In the July 1984 issue, Associate Editor J. Jefferson Miller, now a public relations executive with Galaxy Aerospace, wrote an article suggesting that huge product liability judgments might soon cripple the general aviation manufacturing industry. Two years later Cessna stopped making piston aircraft, citing product liability costs. An industry-wide decline in sales then ensued, triggered by the huge premium increases that all GA manufacturers had to bear.
This author served a two-year stint as AOPA Pilot's editor in 1987 and 1988, and then it was Richard L. Collins' turn. Collins, previously editor of Flying, was editor in chief from 1988 to 1989. Under his editorship the magazine went to an all-four-color format. With Collins' hiring of renowned aviation photographer Mike Fizer, there was a new emphasis on high-quality photography. AOPA Pilot is the only aviation magazine to have its own full-time photographer.
Mark R. Twombly, who served first as a Pilot associate editor, then senior editor, assumed the editorship in 1989. Under Twombly the magazine regularly swelled as high as 140 pages or more, and a bevy of new contributors came on board: William K. Kershner, Amy Laboda, Lane Wallace, Dan Namowitz, Vince Czaplyski, and Buz Marten.
In May 1991, a special supplement tailored to pilots who fly more sophisticated, powerful airplanes — "Turbine Pilot" — was rolled out. "New Pilot," a special section addressing the informational needs of low-time pilots, was introduced in the August 1992 issue. Each of these sections now appears six times per year in AOPA Pilot. Every AOPA member receives "New Pilot." Members with advanced certificates and ratings automatically receive the "Turbine Pilot" editions, but it's available to any member for the asking.
Thomas B. Haines, the current editor in chief, took the job in July 1994. Haines came swiftly up the Pilot ranks from news and associate editor responsibilities, like Twombly before him. Under Haines, the magazine underwent a massive graphic redesign, and the mix and subject matter of the articles were expanded to give the magazine even more advantages over its newsstand competitors. Noted author Stephen Coonts was brought on board as a contributor, and so was the well-known educator and humorist Rod Machado. With the publication of an entire issue given over to the topic of aircraft ownership in March 1996, Pilot resumed its emphasis on issue-oriented journalism. In 1997 the focus on technique was refined with the introduction of a year-long series of articles called "Measure of Skill"; this year that focus will continue with "Instrument Insights," monthly discussions on instrument flying.
As a result of these and other improvements, Pilot has grown to unprecedented page counts in the last three years; many issues now hover around the 160-page level. Factor in the phenomenal growth in AOPA membership and your association's official publication is now the world's biggest, most widely read general aviation magazine.
E-mail the author at [email protected].
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