Best Aviation News Websites to Follow

The aviation news websites worth bookmarking fall into four groups: trade outlets that follow airlines and manufacturers, general aviation sites written for people who fly small airplanes, enthusiast sites that cover route launches and liveries, and incident trackers. I read across all four, because a 737 delivery story, an FAA medical rule change and a diverted A321 almost never show up in the same place. Some of the best reporting costs money, so the paywall question gets its own section.

Trade press: Aviation Week, The Air Current, FlightGlobal

These are the outlets airline planners, lessors and engineers read. They break program delays, engine durability problems and order books before the mainstream press picks them up.

Aviation Week

Aviation Week Network publishes the weekly Aviation Week & Space Technology plus coverage of defense, space, MRO and business aviation. The depth is real: certification timelines, supplier capacity, military procurement. Much of the analysis carries a “Subscription Required” banner, so casual readers see headlines and the first paragraph. The free Check 6 podcast from the same newsroom is a decent taste of how the editors think.

The Air Current

The Air Current is a subscription-first newsroom built around long, technical reporting on aircraft programs, supply chains, airline strategy and safety. Headlines are public; the full pieces are for subscribers, with quarterly and annual plans. If you want to understand why a widebody slipped another year, this is where the explanation tends to appear first, with the engineering detail left in.

FlightGlobal

FlightGlobal carries the Flight International and Airline Business names. Some news is open, while a premium subscription opens the full archive, the daily briefing newsletter and the airline data pieces. It has a more international lens than the US outlets, which helps when the story is an Airbus decision in Toulouse or a Gulf carrier’s fleet plan.

Leeham News and AIN

Leeham News and Analysis focuses on Airbus, Boeing and the engine makers, with a mix of open posts and subscriber material. AIN Media Group agreed to buy it in 2025; AIN’s own site, ainonline.com, remains the go-to for business aviation, from bizjet deliveries to charter regulation.

General aviation: AVweb, AOPA, FLYING

For anyone renting a 172 or saving for a first airplane, the GA outlets matter more than the trade press. They cover the FAA rule changes, avgas transitions, accident trends and gear that affect weekend pilots.

• AVweb runs daily GA news, a reader Picture of the Day and opinion columns from working pilots. It sits in the Firecrown aviation group alongside FLYING, Plane & Pilot, KITPLANES and AirlineGeeks.
• AOPA publishes its news on aopa.org without a paywall. Membership adds the magazine, legal services and the advocacy work in Washington, which is where many GA rule fights get decided.
• FLYING is Firecrown’s flagship title, with aircraft reviews, training content and the long-running “I Learned About Flying From That” column, now also a podcast.
• General Aviation News is a smaller, steady source for type clubs, fly-ins, homebuilts and maintenance topics.

Airline and enthusiast coverage: Simple Flying, AirlineGeeks

Simple Flying publishes at high volume: new routes, fleet changes, cabin products, airport stories and explainers on how a given aircraft type evolved. It is free and ad-supported, and the sheer output means you will find a piece on nearly any airline question. The trade-off is depth; for a contested story, cross-check with a trade outlet before quoting a number.

AirlineGeeks covers the US airline industry with a younger staff, many of them enthusiasts and aviation students, and runs a YouTube channel alongside the site. It is a good middle ground between the trade press and pure fan content.

Incidents and safety: The Aviation Herald

The Aviation Herald, usually shortened to AvHerald, has tracked incidents and accidents since 2008 as a small operation based in Austria. Entries are terse and factual: flight number, aircraft type, phase of flight, what the crew reported, where the airplane landed. They get updated as investigators publish preliminary and final reports, so an entry from last spring may now carry the official findings.

Pair it with the NTSB for US investigations and the Aviation Safety Network for historical accident data if you follow flight safety trends. When a diversion makes headlines, the sequence I use is AvHerald for the facts, Flightradar24 for the track and descent profile, and LiveATC for the frequency recording if it was archived.

Paywalls: free, metered or subscription

Access models change, but in 2026 the split looks like this:

Outlet	Main focus	Access
Aviation Week	Industry, defense, space	Much of the analysis needs a subscription
The Air Current	Programs, supply chain, strategy	Subscription, quarterly or annual
FlightGlobal	Global airlines and manufacturers	Some open news, premium for full access
Leeham News	Airbus, Boeing, engines	Open posts plus subscriber content
AVweb	General aviation	Free, ad-supported
AOPA	GA news and advocacy	Free news; membership for extras
Simple Flying	Airlines, routes, explainers	Free, ad-supported
The Aviation Herald	Incidents and accidents	Free to read

Paying for one trade outlet usually covers what a non-professional needs. If your job touches airlines, airports or aerospace suppliers, an employer or university library may already hold a site license, so ask before buying an individual plan.

A reading stack that fits your flying

Nobody reads everything. A tight stack beats twenty half-read tabs.

• Weekend GA pilot: AVweb daily, AOPA for rules and advocacy, FLYING for aircraft and training features.
• Industry watcher or investor: The Air Current or Aviation Week, plus Leeham for manufacturing and FlightGlobal for the international view.
• Enthusiast and frequent flyer: Simple Flying and AirlineGeeks for routes and fleets, AvHerald when something goes wrong.
• Career-minded student: AVweb and AOPA for training news, plus the pilot hiring threads on r/flying for the human side of the job market.

Red flags in a breaking aviation story

Fast coverage gets details wrong, and a few patterns repeat across outlets of every size.

• “Plunged 20,000 feet”: a normal descent for an approach or a pressurization precaution often gets written up like a fall. Check the altitude graph on a tracker before believing the verb.
• “Near-miss”: in US terminal airspace, radar controllers typically keep airplanes 3 nautical miles apart laterally or 1,000 feet vertically. A story that never gives the actual distance is not telling you how close it was.
• Wrong aircraft type: an A320 called a 737, or a regional jet called a “small plane”, tells you how carefully the rest was checked.
• Single anonymous source on an order or a grounding: wait a day for a trade outlet to confirm.

Beyond websites: audio and video

Several of these newsrooms now publish beyond text. Aviation Week has Check 6, FLYING turned its classic column into a podcast, and Flightradar24 runs AvTalk, a weekly news show. The best aviation podcasts and YouTube channels work as a second layer: the website gives you the facts, the audio gives you context from people who fly, build or certify airplanes for a living.

The habit worth building is cross-checking. When a single outlet reports an order, a grounding or a new FAA policy, look for it in a second source with a different business model. A trade subscription site and a free ad-supported site rarely make the same mistake on the same day.