It should be noted that newspapers have increasingly been placing two years or more of their archives on the Internet; some can even be accessed for free. Those that can be searched are a gold mine of airline information.
Located at Http://www. southamerica-business. com/newspapers, the Brazilian firm of Messing & Asociados has built the most helpful Internet guide to online international newspapers, Newspapers of the World on the Internet. The index is divided by regions, e. g., Africa, Europe, South America, and further by nations. Newspapers are cited regardless of language and whether or not they offer an archive or, better yet, an archive with a search engine.
Internet access to the back files of the following newspapers are particularly helpful: The Irish Times, The Namibian, the Aberdeen (Scotland) Press and Journal, The St. Petersburg Times, the American city business journals (e. g., The South Florida Business Journal, The Business Journal of Phoenix), The Financial Times, The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, and others cited from time to time in the text of airline profiles.
Two other online newspaper indexes are also helpful. American Journalism Review offers AJR NewsLink: U. S. Newspapers by State. This site, located at Http://ajr. newslink. org, is devoted only to U. S. coverage and picks up a number of newspapers not included in the Messing & Asociados titles. For example, while attempting to discover the ultimate fate of Southern Air Transport, this site led to The Columbus Dispatch Internet site, with its archive of stories available via its search engine. Typing in the name of the company, as well as the subject “airlines,” resulted in the retrieval of relevant data. It should be noted that AJR NewsLink also reaches out to various magazines that maintain an Internet presence. The “Regional” subdivision is particularly helpful, leading as it does to journals as diverse as Texas Monthly and Paris Match.
NewsCentral: The Largest Newspaper Index on the Web located at Http://www. all-links. com/newscentral contains 3,500 links (some of which are dead) and which, like the AJR site, can be used as a check on the Messing & Asociados service. The site is arranged by geographical location (North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia), as well as College/K-12. Singapore, and the extremely useful Shipping Times, can be found under “Asia,” and can be reviewed for several years via its search engine.
Canoe Online Explorer at Http://www. canoe. ca allows users to review all aspects of Canadian business and finance, with useful coverage of airline and aircraft manufacturing topics. Using the search engine, one can visit the topic “Airline Mergers,” where a large and valuable archive of newspaper articles concerning Canadian airline restructuring will be found.
Several organizations specialize in publishing news releases. The following from the U. K. and Canada are the most helpful:
Two-Ten News Network at Http://www. twoten. press. net provides Internet access to stories on the U. K.’s only full-text commercial newswire and includes a two-year archive.
Canada NewsWire at Http://www. newswire. ca is available in English and French and allows one to search by category, organization, date, industry, keyword, stock symbol, or subject.
Caribbean AirNews located at Http://www. candoo. com/airnews is a very current, extremely helpful full-text archive of newspaper articles concerning airlines of and airline activity in the Eastern Caribbean since September 1997. Though not a newspaper site, Roger Chung-Wee’s Caribbean Airlines located at Http://www. caribbeanaviation. com, is a similarly helpful, updated guide.
Finally, the sites of the British Broadcasting Corporation at Http://www. bbc. co. uk, the Cable News Network at Http://www. cnn. com, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation at Http://www. abc. net. au> are searchable and helpful.
Those wishing to keep up with airline developments can do so by regularly searching these special sites and following such aviation and airline print journals as Air Transport World, Aviation Week and Space Technology, Flight International, Rotor & Wing International, Regional Airline World, Airliners, and Airways.
World History
