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EditorialAviation news held to aviation standards.

Editorial Standards
of the AeroCopilot Newsroom

We cover regulatory, safety, and industry news for US pilots. Our editorial constitution is built around a single principle: pilots make consequential decisions from what they read, and that imposes a higher bar than general-interest journalism. This page documents how we report.

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Sourcing

Source hierarchy. Where our facts come from, ranked by reliability.

1

AeroCopilot internal data

Our own Prisma datasets — METARs, NOTAMs, NTSB CAROL, FAA Airworthiness Directives, FAA registry. Always preferred when the story can be supported. User-data aggregates pass an anonymization gate before publication.

2

US Government public-domain

FAA, NTSB, NWS, NOAA, SEC, GAO, Federal Register, DOT Inspector General. 17 U.S.C. § 105 — federal works are public domain. We quote verbatim with document-ID attribution.

3

Original reporting

When we contact named individuals or organizations, we triangulate through multiple official documents and on-record statements. Multi-document confirmation is required before publishing investigative claims.

4

Licensed wires (default: not used)

We do not republish wire content. If we ever license AP, Reuters, or similar, the disclosure will appear in the article footer.

5

Trade press as discovery only

AVweb, Flying, Air Current, AIN. We may follow a story tip from these outlets, but we re-report from primary sources. We never reproduce paid news content verbatim.

Voice

Two voices, one standard. Same factual rigor across news and lifestyle coverage.

James — News editor
Third-person, declarative, sober. Covers regulatory action, NTSB investigations, ADs, NPRMs, OEM activity, weather impact, ATC events. AvWeek-grade tone with no hype, no speculation, no implied causation.
Sarah — Travel and lifestyle editor
Second-person, anecdote-led, opinionated but warm. Covers destinations, gear, type clubs, $100 hamburger trips, seasonal flying, pilot proficiency. Air Facts Journal warmth — opinions allowed, errors are not.
Discipline

Legal and ethical guardrails. The cardinal rules every story must clear before publication.

Naming discipline before NTSB Preliminary
We do not name pilots involved in accidents until their names appear in a public NTSB document or court filing. Local TV identification is not sufficient.
Probable cause is a literal quote
When NTSB issues a probable-cause finding, we quote it verbatim and cite the report. We never paraphrase causation.
Neutral verbs in active investigations
Investigators are examining. Authorities have not assigned cause. We avoid 'pilot error', 'negligence', or any phrasing that imputes fault before official findings.
Aircraft type to subvariant
Cirrus SR22 versus SR22T. Cessna 172 versus 172S. The variant matters to operators — getting it wrong is a credibility failure with our audience.
No banned hype phrases
'Could have been catastrophic', 'narrowly avoided', 'heroic'. We describe what happened, not what might have happened.
No political positioning
No partisan adjectives, administration nicknames, or culture-war framing. Pilots span the political spectrum and we report to all of them equally.
User data

The 20-entity anonymization gate.

AeroCopilot operates a substantial first-party dataset — logbooks, AI usage, charter releases, and more. Some of it could power original journalism that no other publisher can match. None of it gets published unless it passes one hard-coded gate: every aggregate must contain at least 20 distinct entities (pilots, operators, aircraft) before any number leaves our analytics environment.

This rule is enforced in code. Our newsroom query helpers filter rows that fall below the threshold and drop them before they ever reach an editor. We never name an individual user, operator, or aircraft tail unless the subject is already the topic of a public NTSB or FAA action. We never compare named operators in safety, MEL, or discrepancy reporting without consent.

When the gate forces a story to be cut, we cut the story. The data is not the standard — the people behind the data are.

Accountability

Right of reply and corrections. How we engage with subjects and fix our mistakes.

Right of reply
When we are about to publish a critical claim about a named entity, we contact them in advance and offer time to respond. The contact attempt and any response are logged in the article frontmatter.
Methodology box
Investigative pieces include a methodology box documenting which datasets were queried, which time windows, and which limitations apply. We do not hide our work.
Corrections policy
We correct errors prominently. The article retains the timestamp of the original publication and a clearly marked correction note explaining what changed and when.
No silent edits
Substantive edits to a published article are logged. Typo fixes are silent. Any change that affects a factual claim is disclosed in the correction note.
Disclosure

Use of AI in our newsroom. What AI does and does not do here.

AI assists with drafting
We use large language models to assist with drafting, structuring, and stylistic editing. AI is a research and writing tool, not a publishing authority.
Humans verify every fact
Every primary-source URL, document number, AD number, and quoted phrase is verified by a human before publication. We do not publish unverified AI-generated claims.
No fabricated sources
If a source cannot be confirmed via a real URL or document, the claim does not run. Hallucinated references are a publication failure, not a stylistic choice.
Pilot review on safety stories
Stories involving accident analysis, ADs, or operational guidance are reviewed by a certificated pilot before publication. Editorial accuracy and operational accuracy are both required.
Independence

Editorial independence and disclosures.

AeroCopilot is a commercial platform. The newsroom is part of that platform, and we acknowledge the relationship rather than hide it. When we cover a topic that touches our own product — a feature we build, a competitor we have benchmarked, a partner we work with — we disclose that connection in the article body.

We do not accept embargoes that compromise our reporting. We do not accept junkets without explicitly disclosing them in any resulting coverage. We do not run sponsored content as news. Advertising and editorial are separated.

If you are a subject of our coverage and believe a story has failed any of these standards, please contact us. We treat every credible challenge to our reporting as a serious obligation.

Coverage

What we cover. And what each format requires.

Regulatory and safety news

  • Airworthiness Directives, NPRMs, Final Rules
  • NTSB preliminary and final reports
  • FAA enforcement actions and Special Airworthiness Information Bulletins
  • Significant weather events affecting flying
  • Major OEM service bulletins and certification milestones

Travel, gear, and lifestyle

  • Airport spotlights and $100 hamburger destinations
  • EFB, headset, and avionics gear reviews
  • Type club coverage and seasonal flying
  • Pilot proficiency scenarios and learning content
  • Aviation events and fly-ins

Investigative and data journalism

  • Trend analysis from anonymized internal datasets
  • Multi-document triangulation on industry shifts
  • Methodology box on every investigative piece
  • Right of reply attempted before publication

Roundups and digests

  • Weekly aviation news roundup (Mondays)
  • Monthly safety digest tied to NTSB activity
  • Quarterly OEM and certification recap
  • Annual industry retrospective

Read the newsroom.

Same standards, every story. From breaking ADs to weekend destination spotlights.

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Editorial concerns, corrections, or right-of-reply requests? Contact our newsroom. We treat every credible challenge as a serious obligation.