Celebrating 25 years, GlobalAir.com is ready for NBAA-BACE Convention

Posted: 10/08/2021

Visit GlobalAir.com at booth 1927 while in Las Vegas

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 8, 2021 Contact: Josh Coffman [email protected] (888) 236-4309

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The first Sony Playstation sold; the first item auctioned off on eBay, and the creation of Global Aviation Navigator. If that were a clue on Jeopardy!, then the answer in the form of a question would be, “What was 1995?”

It was December of that year when surfers of the World Wide Web could first visit GlobalAir.com by logging onto America Online with a dialup modem and a Netscape browser, powered by an Intel Pentium Pro processor and Windows 95.

While much of the tech at the dawn of the Dot-Com boom has faded, the aviation community can still count on one of the first and still one of the largest aircraft-related sites.

GlobalAir.com is celebrating its 25 years of service and innovation with a trip to Las Vegas, attending the NBAA-BACE Convention.

A Quarter Century of online aviation innovation
Global Aviation Navigator would ultimately settle into its dot-com brand name, GlobalAir.com, and along the way, create resources to serve everyone from hobbyist pilots to top-level industry professionals.

President and CEO Jeffrey Carrithers, a former aircraft broker looking for a new challenge, launched the site in his apartment, and success did not come overnight. At one point he operated the venture out of a friend’s basement.

“There were many nights that I walked the hallways, wondering ‘Is this going to make it?’” Carrithers recalled in 2006 to Louisville Business First. “Honestly, I didn't think I was an entrepreneurial type. I didn't want to go back to the resale business, but I knew I loved aviation.”

While tech startups crashed on Wall Street at the dawn of the new millennium, GlobalAir.com’s revenue moved into the green, with a renewed focus on aircraft sales.

In 2000, GlobalAir.com launched its industry-redefining BrokerNet, allowing aircraft brokerages the ability to share information directly with one another through email broadcasts.

From there, GlobalAir.com grew from a home-based operation, ultimately moving into the former Flight Services Station at Bowman Field (KLOU), in late 2009.

Along the way, GlobalAir.com has maintained one of the oldest and largest aviation business directories online, as well as a robust aviation events calendar.

Its Airport Resource Center has long been used by aviators to get airport weather information and FAA information and notices for pilots. Today, that system includes the most up-to-date FBO fuel prices found anywhere on the internet.

The GlobalAir.com BuyPlane app is the most widely used aircraft for sale app in the industry with more than 54,000 downloads.

“We have come a long way,” Carrithers said ahead of the NBAA Convention. “Yet in some ways, we are just beginning, because you are going to hear a lot from us in the coming year.”

GlobalAir.com looks forward to its next innovations
In addition to supporting aviators and its surrounding business community with a numerous databases and tools, GlobalAir.com also provides direct digital marketing resources to clients and the public at large. That includes the publication of aviation news articles and press releases, which are shared with the Globair.com community, consisting of tens of thousands of niche email databases and a collective following on a suite of social media accounts of more than 70,000.

Efforts will ramp up in the year ahead to embolden and influence that audience and to better align objectives between our advertisers and site users. Businesses that are interested in advertising with GlobalAir.com are encouraged to visit the company’s booth, No. 1927, during the NBAA-BACE Convention, Oct. 12-14.

Those not attending the convention can download the revamped GlobalAir.com media kit on the company’s advertising page.

“We have found new ways to thrive despite the unthinkable challenges we have waded through in 2020 and 2021,” Carrithers said. “Thanks to that and being grateful for having made it 25 years so far, I feel like we are especially prepared to make some key moves in year 26 for us, and we welcome partners in the aviation world, new and old, to climb on board.”

How GlobalAir.com looked in 1996

ABOUT GLOBALAIR.COM
Based at Bowman Field (KLOU) in Louisville, Kentucky, GlobalAir.com is the largest aviation resource and one of the oldest on the internet. It serves the general aviation and business aircraft communities by offering clients and online visitors a wide range of premium aircraft and aviation-related data and services. Services offered by GlobalAir.com include Aircraft For Sale, Aviation Articles, Airmail News, Airport Resource Center (ARC) that displays U.S. airport data, Aviation Business Directory, and Aviation Events all containing thousands of companies and listings. GlobalAir.com's website receives more than 300,000 unique visitors per month and has helped connect the aviation industry since 1995. GlobalAir.com's highly successful aviation magazine App "BuyPlane" has had over 50,000 downloads since its launch in late 2017.

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