Editorial Policy

Last reviewed: 10 September 2026

This page explains how AeroCorner decides what to publish, where our facts come from, who checks them, and what happens when we get something wrong. It is the standard we hold ourselves to, and the standard we invite you to hold us to.

Aviation is a subject where precision matters. A range figure that quietly swaps nautical miles for statute miles is wrong by fifteen percent, and a specification lifted from the wrong variant is simply a different aircraft.

Most of the rules below exist because we made a mistake once and decided never to make it again.

Who We Are

AeroCorner is an independent aviation publication. The site launched in 2009 as Aircraft Compare and was renamed AeroCorner in 2021, and it has covered aircraft, airports, airlines and flight operations continuously since then.

We are not owned by an airline, an aircraft manufacturer, a charter broker or a trade association. No outside party can commission, approve or veto anything we publish. More about the site and its history is on our about page.

Our audience is broad: pilots and engineers, aircraft spotters, aviation students, and people who simply want a clear answer about something they saw at an airport. We write for all of them at once, which means we explain the jargon rather than assuming it.

What We Publish

Our reference database covers more than 900 aircraft types and over 1,500 airports. Those pages are built from manufacturer documentation, type certificate data sheets, and official operator and airport publications.

Our articles fall into a few recognisable shapes. Rankings and comparisons measure real aircraft against a stated criterion, explainers answer a specific question about how aviation actually works, and news covers developments as they happen.

Each shape carries its own bar. A ranking has to state the measure it ranks on and apply it consistently, an explainer has to be genuinely correct rather than merely plausible, and news has to be attributed to whoever established the facts.

How We Research a Story

We separate the sources that tell us a story exists from the sources we actually write from. That distinction does more for our accuracy than any other rule we follow.

Industry outlets, aviation feeds and press releases are treated as topic signals. They tell us something happened and is worth looking into. We do not reuse their text, and we do not treat their reporting as our own verification.

The facts come from primary and official sources. That means accident investigators such as the NTSB, regulators such as the FAA and EASA, manufacturer press rooms, official airline and airport statements, and public filings.

Where a story rests on a document, we read the document. For a bill, a court ruling, a regulatory order or a contract award, we go to the original text rather than to somebody’s summary of it, because summaries lose the qualifiers that change what a claim means.

Anything consequential is corroborated across at least two independent sources before it is published. If a key detail cannot be established, we write that it is unknown instead of filling the gap.

How We Credit Our Sources

Articles that draw on primary sources carry a visible Sources list linking to the specific documents and pages we used. Those are the sources we actually opened, not a reading list assembled afterwards.

When we name another outlet in the body of a story, we link to the exact article we are referring to. Naming a publication without linking it makes the claim unverifiable and borrows its authority without pointing at it.

We attribute a fact to whoever established it, not to whoever relayed it. If an investigator determined something and several outlets reported it, the investigator is the source, and the outlet is credited for the reporting itself.

Our Accuracy Standards

Every factual claim we publish is checked against the source cited for it. These are the specific commitments behind that:

• We cite only what we actually read, and only for what it actually says. Every source in a Sources list was opened during the writing of that article.
• A statistic keeps the qualifier its source gave it. A figure that applies to one mission profile, one variant or one measurement condition is never quietly presented as a general number.
• We never invent precision. When sources give a range or disagree with each other, we publish the range and say who says what.
• We convert from the unit the source used. Nautical miles are not statute miles, and treating them as interchangeable produces a number that is internally consistent and materially wrong.
• Separate events stay separate facts. Two incidents, orders or variants that occurred at different times each keep their own date, place and count.
• Live stories get a recency check. Before writing any present-tense statement about an ongoing situation, we search for developments newer than our most recent source.
• We distinguish what is established from what is claimed. A statement by an interested party is reported as that party’s claim, not as settled fact.
• Superlatives get verified explicitly. The only, the first, the largest ever and never are the sentences readers quote and the ones most likely to be wrong, so each is checked rather than accepted because it reads well.

Every Page Is Reviewed and Approved by a Person

Nothing publishes automatically on AeroCorner. There is no scheduled queue that pushes work live, and no automated process anywhere in our pipeline has the ability to make a page public.

Every article arrives as a draft. It is then checked claim by claim against its sources, edited for accuracy, clarity and tone, and swept for the specification and unit errors that are easy to make in aviation writing and hard to catch on a read-through.

An editor then reads the finished piece and decides whether it is good enough to carry our name. Publishing is a deliberate action taken by that person, not a default that happens if nobody objects.

The same applies to updates. A revision to a live page goes through the same review as a new one, and is applied only after a person has read the change and approved it.

How We Choose Images

We prefer real photography, always. Where a genuine photograph of the aircraft, airport or moment exists and can be licensed, that is the image we use.

Images are selected to fit the specific story. When an article is about a particular aircraft type, operator or event, we look for a photograph of that type, that operator or that event, not a generic aircraft that happens to look similar.

That care matters more in aviation than in most subjects. Variants of the same aircraft family differ visibly, liveries change over time, and a photograph of the wrong sub-type is a factual error even when nobody notices it.

Our photography comes from licensed libraries, Creative Commons and public domain sources, contributor submissions, and aircraft spotters around the world. We credit the photographer or source wherever the licence requires it, and copyright remains with the rights holder.

Full detail on where our images come from, how they are credited, and how to raise a copyright concern is on our photo usage page.

Every image on the site carries a caption explaining what it shows. Charts and data graphics are computed directly from the underlying figures rather than drawn by hand, so a chart cannot display a value the data does not contain.

A genuine photograph is never labelled as AI-generated. Mislabelling real photography is a failure we treat as more serious than the reverse.

AI-Generated Illustrations

We generally prefer authentic photographs wherever a suitable image is available. There are situations where an appropriate real-world image cannot be sourced, licensed, or simply does not exist.

In those cases we may use an AI-generated illustration. This applies when no suitable photograph is reasonably available, when the subject is conceptual or hypothetical, or when a diagram communicates a mechanism more clearly than a photograph could.

We clearly label AI-generated images so that readers can distinguish them from authentic photographs. Each image record on the site stores whether it was generated and by which model, so the label is a property of the file rather than a note we might forget to add.

AI-generated images are illustrations. They should not be interpreted as photographic documentation of actual events, aircraft, locations or scenes.

Our illustrations never depict a real airline livery, logo, registration, airport name or identifiable person. An aircraft in an illustration is a generic type, never a claim about a specific airframe.

Several parts of the site carry no AI imagery at all. News, aircraft rankings, celebrity aircraft coverage and our reference pages use real photography only, because a real airframe deserves a real photograph.

How We Use AI in Our Reporting

We use AI tools in our research and drafting process, and we think readers are entitled to know that. They help us gather material, work through long technical documents, and produce first drafts.

They do not decide what we publish. Every factual claim in a draft is verified by a person against a named source before it goes anywhere, and any claim that cannot be traced back to a source is removed rather than published.

No page on this site is published on a model’s say-so. The judgment about what is true, what is worth covering and what is ready to go live is made by people, and the approval step described above applies to every page without exception.

We treat an AI tool the way we would treat any research assistant. Useful for finding and organising material, never a source in its own right, and never the final word on whether something is correct.

Keeping Our Content Current

Aviation changes. Fleets retire, orders convert, records fall and regulations are rewritten, so an article that was accurate when published can drift out of date without a single word changing.

We periodically rebuild existing pages against current data rather than leaving them to age. When a page has been substantially updated, it carries a visible last-updated date.

Older articles that remain accurate are left as they are. We do not restamp a page with a fresh date to make it look newer than it is.

Corrections

We get things wrong sometimes, and we would much rather hear about it than not. If you spot a factual error, an outdated figure or a misattributed source, please tell us through our contact page.

Every report is read and reviewed. Where we confirm an error we correct it, and where a correction changes the substance of what a page said, we note that on the page.

Corrections are not something we treat as an embarrassment to be minimised. A publication that never corrects anything is not a careful one, it is one that is not checking.

How AeroCorner Is Funded

AeroCorner is funded by display advertising and by affiliate commissions. When an article links to a retailer and you buy something, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

Advertisers, ad networks and retailers have no input into our editorial judgment. They do not see articles before publication, they cannot request coverage or its removal, and no ranking, recommendation or review on this site is for sale.

Products we recommend are chosen on merit. A commission never determines what appears in a guide or the order it appears in, and we will say a product is not worth buying when that is our view.

Affiliate links are marked as sponsored in the page code so that browsers and search engines can identify them. Our disclaimer covers terms of use and the limits of the information on this site.

Contact Us

Questions about this policy, corrections, image rights and editorial matters all reach us through the contact page. We read what comes in, and we reply.