AirNav.com censuring

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Curious if anyone else has been censured by AirNav.com when leaving
comments about an FBO's service. I spent $350 on fuel in Hattiesburg
and was asked to limit my courtesy car time to 1/2 hour to drive out
for a sit-down dinner. When posted on AirNav.com, my comments were
changed to:

This comment has been temporarily suspended by AirNav pending an
investigation.

-- Don Shade, July 14, 2008

Answers

I think that FBOs can pay to have airnav.com remove all the comments or to make their listing uncommentable. FBOs and flight schools also need to pay to be listed, which means that airnav.com is not a reliable means of finding out what services are available at a given airport.

If you look at http://www.airnav.com/airport/kbed , for example, you find the two FBOs that sell fuel listed. You won't find East Coast Aero Club or Executive Flyers, two of the largest flight schools in the region. You won't find Nagle Aircraft Service, one of the best piston maintenance shops around. You won't find AirShares, the fractional Cirrus operation.

The best way to look at airnav.com is as an advertising medium for FBOs. It is not an online community.

-- Philip Greenspun, July 14, 2008


The management at AirNav must read your blog because they published my comments almost immediately after I posted this.

-- Don Shade, July 14, 2008

I believe that the missing-FBO problem stems from AirNav's policy regarding listing. If a third party enters a fuel price, an FBO gets a "free" listing showing the price. If the FBO subsequently upgrades to a paid listing and then doesn't want to pay anymore, they get removed and don't go back to a free listing.

AirNav definitely appears to censor any comments that could be construed in a negative way. I enter comments on FBOs that send unsolicited commercial email, and many of them disappear.

-- Kenneth Adelman, December 28, 2008


every time i have left negative comments they have censored them. look at the comments very few if any are critical.

-- ken ouellette, April 27, 2009