FlyingTin is an independent aviation magazine. Most of what we publish is written in-house, but the best aviation stories often come from people out in the world, pilots, engineers, historians, enthusiasts and journalists who know a corner of the industry better than anyone. We are always on the lookout for sharp, original freelance pieces, and our longer features are frequently written by contributors.
This page explains what our editors are looking for, how to pitch, and the terms we work under. Much of it will be obvious to experienced writers, but these guidelines should help make sure that what you send us lands close to what we publish.
Read the magazine first
Before you send an idea, make sure it’s the kind of story we run. Spend some time on the site and get a feel for our beats and our voice.
Broadly, we want aviation and aerospace stories from anywhere in the world that intrigue, entertain, and inform, whether the reader is a 20,000-hour captain, an avionics engineer, or someone who simply loves aeroplanes and has no technical background at all. We cover the full sweep of flight: aircraft and the people who built them, the rise and fall of airlines, airports, accidents and the safety lessons that followed, the technology behind the cockpit, and the industry forces shaping how the world flies.
We want stories that are relevant. Ask yourself why our readers would care. We are not interested in announcements that matter only to a single company or a handful of specialists, and we don’t run thinly disguised marketing. We want stories that say something, that reveal, explain, or reframe, not incremental updates dressed up as news.
Check our archive before pitching. Very often we’ve already covered the subject, and we’ll be looking for a genuinely fresh angle rather than another pass over familiar ground.
What makes a Flying Tin feature
First and foremost, a Flying Tin feature is something people will love to read. We are not a trade bulletin, a reference work, or a homework aid. Our pieces are well researched and accurate, but they also have to stand on their own as good storytelling.
We don’t run features on a subject simply because it’s important to the people involved. Your story needs an angle, real people, a narrative, and a payoff. The content should be new to most of our readers, or there should be a timely reason to tell it now. Above all, it should aim to be the most engaging and insightful piece written on that subject anywhere.
A strong feature usually falls into one of these categories. The examples are real Flying Tin articles, read them to calibrate.
The definitive history. The full arc of an airline, an aircraft, or a company, told as a story rather than a timeline.
- The Rise and Fall of Ansett Airlines: The Forgotten Giant
- A History of Air New Zealand
- The Holyman Family: From the Strait to the Sky
Stories that make you go “wow.” Remarkable engineering, audacious ideas, or dramatic episodes that reward a reader’s attention.
- Did Aviation Peak with the Concorde? The Rise and Fall of Supersonic Travel
The science and technology behind flight. How something actually works, explained clearly enough that a non-specialist comes away genuinely understanding it.
- The History of the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR): How Black Boxes Changed Aviation Safety
- Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia): AWA’s Role in Australian Aviation History
Accidents and the lessons they forced. What happened, why, and what changed in the industry afterwards, handled with rigour and respect.
- When a Thunderstorm Took Down a Jet: Southern Airways Flight 242
Industry trends shaping the future of flying. The economics, technology and forces that decide how, and whether, we fly.
- The Golden Age of Flying to Today: How Recessions and LCCs Changed Everything
The definitive guide to… A clear, authoritative explainer on a subject readers half-understand and want to understand properly.
Quirky and unusual. Smaller stories with an irresistible hook, the strange, the forgotten, the gloriously odd corners of aviation.
What we are not looking for
- Press-release rewrites, new route launches, order announcements, quarterly results, with no original reporting or angle.
- Incremental developments that non-specialists neither know nor care about.
- Parochial stories with no wider interest beyond one local airfield or operator.
- Broad overviews of an entire field with no story driving them (e.g. “an overview of jet engines”).
- Pieces about a project or technique rather than a result or outcome.
- Speculation or conspiracy not backed by credible sources or documented evidence.
- Promotional or advertorial content for a product, company or destination.
How to pitch
When you suggest a story, send us a paragraph or two saying exactly what it is and why it matters. If it isn’t obvious, spell out what makes it different from what’s been done before. The story should make us sit up, the kind of thing you’d tell a friend at the bar. That “would I tell someone about this?” test is a good gauge of whether a story has legs.
Send focused pitches on one or two well-developed ideas rather than a long list of half-formed ones. Your story is competing for space against many others, so give us an opening line that makes it stand out.
Tell us about your angle or your edge. Maybe you have access to a hard-to-reach engineer, original photographs, archive material, or first-hand experience. Tell us about the extra you bring.
Include the practical details: the names of the people and organisations involved, where you came across the story, what coverage (if any) it has already had, and, for anything tied to a report, anniversary or event, the relevant dates and any embargo.
If you haven’t written for us before, tell us a little about your background and send a sample or two of your writing. And don’t forget your email address and a contact number.
An example of a pitch we’d commission
The plane that taught the world about metal fatigue
In the early 1950s the de Havilland Comet was the future of flight, the world’s first jet airliner, beautiful and fast, and a source of enormous national pride. Then, within months of each other, two of them simply came apart in mid-air. There was no obvious cause, no bad weather, no clear pilot error. The fleet was grounded and an investigation began that would change aviation forever.
In this feature I’ll tell the story of those crashes and the extraordinary detective work that followed, including the decision to submerge an entire Comet fuselage in a water tank and pressurise it thousands of times to recreate the stress of repeated flights. That experiment revealed the culprit: metal fatigue cracking from the corners of the aircraft’s near-square windows, a phenomenon barely understood at the time.
The payoff is everywhere around us. The rounded windows on every airliner you’ve ever flown in, the way modern aircraft structures are designed and tested, and the entire discipline of fatigue analysis all trace back to those investigations. I’ll speak to a structural engineer and an aviation historian, and walk readers through the science clearly enough that they’ll never look at a cabin window the same way again.
(Note how this works: a hook, real people, a clear narrative, and a payoff that connects a 70-year-old story to the reader’s own experience.)
Writing for us
We’re always working to raise the quality of what we publish. Contributors are expected to go to primary sources, to interview the people involved, ask hard questions, check the record for related events or research, and, where relevant, seek an independent view. Reworking secondary material such as press releases or encyclopaedia entries is not acceptable.
Our readers are knowledgeable, and they expect intelligent, well-structured writing that gives them the context to understand why a story matters. Explain things well enough that a reader comes away understanding how they work, but keep the writing accessible and free of unnecessary jargon. Pieces should be engaging, internally consistent, and accurate down to the detail, this is an audience that will notice if you put the wrong engines on an aircraft.
Who to pitch
Send your idea, with “PITCH” in the subject line, to:
Or use the Write for Us form on our contact page.
Our Postal Address: P.O.Box 1388, Noosa Heads, Queensland 4567, Australia
Copyright
Before we publish, contributors agree to grant FlyingTin (Laguna Media) the rights to the article, including the specific form of words used. In practice that means you can’t sell the same piece to another publication, though you’re free to write a different article on the same subject elsewhere.
FlyingTin is published by Laguna Media. Thanks for thinking of us, we read every pitch.
