Hello all – Jen here (Mrs Airliners Live) – welcoming you to the second edition of the Airliners Live monthly newsletter.
Coming up in this month’s newsletter, we are excited to share with you the goings on of this last month, and what’s coming up in October – including our Annual Charity livestream.
I hope you are all well and settling into Autumn. I love Autumn – the crisp sunny days, cosy blankets and snuggling up with a book and a hot chocolate – bliss! Plus, we’re on the countdown to Chr- oh, wait, not allowed to say that yet… moving on!
Martin and I had a lovely break a few weeks ago in Anglesey for the last bit of Summer. We got lucky with the weather, had some scorching days, epic sunsets, chippy teas, stargazed in the hot-tub and watched shooting stars. A perfect way to celebrate our anniversary.
Martin asked me if I’d like to write a bit for this newsletter, and while I don’t have anything particularly exciting to write about, I did want to take a minute to say hello and thank you all for your continued support over the years.
I’ve been on this journey with Martin from day one. From the original concept and deciding on a name – super important… “What’s in a name?” Designing the very first logo sat on his mum’s settee in Pembrokeshire on New Year’s Eve with Mrs Browns Boys and Jools Holland on in the background. To the very first shows with Charlie on the old mound or over on South Side, with the tent and old faithful battery pack. (And seemingly better EE signal!)
And here we are today, after years of hard work and commitment, nearing 800k subscribers on YouTube, branched out to Vancouver, Flight Sim shows with Jon, ‘Mattcam’, merch store, podcasts, charity shows, TAS Fairs and all sorts! Ever evolving and always improving to make this the best possible aviation channel for our amazing community.
And that’s the heart of all this, the core – community. From the old to the new. The VIPs and ever faithful chatters in every show. Our moderators with their un-rivalled dedication and patience.
While I’m incredibly proud of Martin and pleased that he gets to do this for a living, it’s not always an easy ride. It’s had its challenges and we have had to make personal sacrifices. Weekends for one. And the back bedroom – the original office and merch store pre-Barton! But seeing what a difference the shows make to the community, how they help everyone in one way or another, how people have made friends and connections – it’s humbling and makes it easier to live with those sacrifices and challenging times.
In the words of William Arthur Ward, "Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." So thank you, truly. For every like, every donation, every message in the chat, every contribution in the VIP lounge, everyone who turns up to the TAS Fairs and makes it all worthwhile. Thank you!
And before I go, let me just tell you about the VIP Halloween pumpkin carving competition!
Here in the UK, we don’t celebrate Halloween on the same grand scale as our US friends, but we do love a good pumpkin. And what better way to showcase our imagination and skill than a pumpkin carving competition!
We’ll put a post up in the VIP lounge at the end of this month to kick off the competition. And the lucky VIP winner will receive a £20 voucher for the merch store.
Oh, and a top tip for those of you with furry friends (gerbils and the likes) – save the seeds from the pumpkin, dry them out and bake them on a low heat, and you’ve got a tasty treat. Our Georgie loves them!
Georgie and Jen
That’s it from me, so I’ll hand over to the guys, and see you all soon.
Take care for now,
Jen x
Feedback from the 1st Newsletter
Martin
We just wanted to say a very quick thank you to everyone who sent us emails, comments and spoke to us in person about how much they enjoyed reading our first newsletter. We didn't realise quite how popular this would be and it's certainly something we will continue moving forward.
We aim to include not only news, but features from different team members to keep things interesting.
The newsletter is a great way of keeping the community up to date and to be honest, we enjoy writing it!
Matt & Paul - Stars of the Show!
Martin
This year, Andy and I have been extremely busy pushing the channel forward and although we have loved every second, we had both only missed a couple of weekends each throughout the year. It was certainly time for us to take a break to refresh and come back in time for the charity fundraiser preparations!
One of the hardest things for us is leaving the channel offline. We always try to plan our holidays where one of us is here, whilst the other is away so the shows can continue but this year, it wasn't possible. So we had a choice to make, either miss 2 weeks of shows, or hand over the controls to Matt.
Matt has been with us since the Twitch days and has not only been a very loyal viewer and supporter of the channel, but a close friend of myself and Andy. He is the most reliable guy I know, always ready to step in and help out where needed, usually for nothing in return. He's an absolute gent!
Since Matt began joining us weekly on our Sunday shows looking after Matt Cam, he gained the experience needed in setting up all the equipment required for livestreaming. The only difference being, his live stream was coming to me in the studio - instead of you at home. A very small configuration change could make it possible for Matt to go live by himself!
But Matt didn't want to do things by halves and came down on his day off to learn how to set up the audio equipment and everything required to not only stream by himself but have guests on the show too. A step he didn't need to take but it certainly made for a better show.
So whilst Andy and I were away Matt kept the channel online streaming on our regular days and he absolutely smashed it!!
Our long term supporter and Mod Paul (Mr Bing Bong) joined Matt on the midweek show and the two of them together smashed it! It was a super interesting show with all the banter and laughter you know and love! The viewer numbers were fantastic and the feedback from all the shows was overwhelmingly positive.
It's amazing that me and Andy have such a great team behind us that we can take 2 weeks off with no disruption to the schedule, and the viewer satisfaction. An amazing job guys, thank you.
On our return, we had to give this some serious thought. We have had a chat with Matt and moving forward, on the Fridays where Matt isn't working, he will be bringing you a Fri-YAY show!! This is a bonus show so although it will not be guaranteed every week, due to Matt's work commitments, it will be semi-regular and a great way to keep the channel fresh and give you guys at home an extra show!
Matt Cam Fridays - It's now a thing!! 
Andy, Sam and Dakota's Texas Trip | Singapore Airlines Overview
Andy
It's great to be back home after almost two weeks in the "Lone Star State" of Texas, visiting friends, plane spotting, and all out binging in the local culture and cuisine.
Dakota waiting to board the A350-900
We did record quite a bit on the GoPro, and thus we'll be editing it down into some semblance of a video, although it wont be as cohesive as the Amsterdam vlog, this too will have a heavy aviation feature, as we visited multiple spotting locations at different airports, as well as aviation features and museums across the cities we visited, with a few wildcards too!
Before glossing over the flights, can I just mention a huge shout out to our channel moderator, Lori M, for being our guide and host while we visited Dallas. She made us feel like royalty! And as well as Noel and Rachael Philips of Noel Philips YouTube channel for welcoming us to their home and treating us to some amazing Texas BBQ in Houston.
(Andy, Lori M, Sam, from left to right)
We flew out on Friday 8th September on a Singapore Airlines A350-900, after getting the economy tickets on a sale, it ended up being cheaper than any other airline. I'll go out and say the service on board was absolutely unbelievable, the professionalism and helpfulness of the staff onboard was 10/10, food was great, seats were relatively comfy, slightly dated inflight entertainment screens, but there was one gripe about the airline.
With the outbound flight taking off just before 11AM, and expected to arrive at 3PM local time in Houston, we were baffled when the crew told all the passengers to close the window blinds as they dimmed the cabin, and made us sit in the dark from roughly the half way mark up until an hour or so before we arrived. This meant we weren't able to see the absolutely magic view of North America emerging over the horizon after transiting the Atlantic, instead just opening the blinds to already be over a very overcast Tennessee.
Landing in Houston, where the local temperature was over 40C
It was baffling to see how that flight operates from Singapore all the way to Texas, and that people onboard were indeed flying that whole flight in one go, just with a refuel stop at Manchester. The cabin dimming may have been a bit of jet-lag relief for those still on Singapore body clocks, so it was an odd combo to have passengers expecting both a day and night experience.
Stay tuned for the vlog on the channel. I absolutely am not promising anything great, but hopefully fills you in with some context and possibly inspiration about visiting the Lone Star State!
Sam plane spotting at IAH, making use of the pickup truck!
Annual Charity Fundraiser 2023 Dates
Andy
An update on this year's charity fundraiser. The date has been set - 28th and 29th October - for the whole weekend we will be running a fundraiser marathon, running extra streams and doing everything we can to raise as much money for the good of MacMillan Cancer Support. This charity is very close to our hearts, and we understand they've done a lot for the people in our community, so it's our annual opportunity to use the amazing community we have to do good in the world, and help an amazing charity.
We have worked with John from MacMillan a number of times in the past, and he even went as far as to gather a few people to interview in the Airliners Live studio - we're looking forward to bringing you those clips!
Joanne from Macmillan Cancer Support Team in the Airliners Live studio
Feedback from The Aviation Podcast
Andy
A big thank you to all who tuned in to the first ever episode of our brand new exclusive "Aviation Podcast" - it's had a great reception, and shout out to Captain Mark for being our first ever guest too!
We've made some changes to the podcast setup since that first episode, including a new set of Shure SM7b microphones, lighting changes, and a few small tweaks that we're super hyped to use for the next guest, which is only a couple of weeks away, so stay tuned for the next episode!
Missed the first episode? Check it out here
Travel Mugs have arrived!
As mentioned in the last newsletter, we have now received the Airliners Live travel mugs! Check these out, they look awesome, great quality, and looking forward to having ours serve us out in the elements of Manchester Airport through the winter months.
Haven't got your travel mug yet? Check them out and order them here
Number crunching
Loopy
Hi again peeps!
In the last Newsletter I touched very briefly on collecting viewer figures, but I never expanded on it. So here goes, and I will try not to bore you with it!
I took it upon myself to collect our viewing numbers back as far as January 2022, but sadly I didn’t take note of the date, so all I had was a notebook full of numbers, with the occasional side note*.
It began when I realised the sub numbers were going up at quite a remarkable rate. The first numbers I wrote were 33.8 to 34.2K subscribers in one show, an increase of 400. The next show went from 34.2 to 34.6 and so on, until a few weeks later we were hitting 700 or 800 a show. Eventually we hit 50,000 subs in the first week of April, and although we had good and bad weeks number wise, it was obvious to me that we were not about to go backwards.
By the end of May 2022, I had started to make a note of how many viewers had watched the live stream, (or at least the number we had peaked at) and how many likes we got per show. But still no date!
It wasn’t until the beginning of July 2022, that my brain finally woke up and I added a date. During my research, (meaning going back through the notebook) I could have gone back slightly earlier, but I felt my information might not be accurate, and I wasn’t about to start guessing or making it up. What would be the point?
So, that in a nutshell is how I do that! Each show, I take the highest number of viewers, add date, day, average viewing figure, and the sub count going into each show and at the end. This is then put onto a spreadsheet, available for the guys to read whenever they want. Ultimately, it shows the groups progression up the ladder to success. If you would like to see the Excel file, contact the guys on contact@airlinerslive.com and I can post it in the VIP lounge.
It’s funny when I think back to my school days, I hated Maths, and some could argue that this is not exactly the subject as taught in schools, and they would be absolutely right. But schools taught me how to write the numbers in the first place and taught me the value of numbers. So why is it, in later life, that I find it so difficult to write the number eight? Try it yourself! Write the number eight ten times and see if the last is the same as the first.
Have fun!
*Side notes will be talked about next month. It will show you where some of today’s ideas came from, but not all of course!
Sign Off
Thanks for reading the October edition of the Airliners Live newsletter. As always, do feel free to let us know if you've read this far, and let us know if you are still enjoying these "small" publications. We get nothing extra for doing these apart from the satisfaction of keeping our wonderful community up to date with the happenings here at Airliners Live
Stay safe, and we'll see you on the next one...
See ya!