Wilson Leach, AIN Publications’ cofounder and managing director, received the Aerospace Media Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award at a banquet in London on July 10. The award recognizes his nearly half century of pioneering work in aviation journalism.
That work began in 1972, when the then 24-year-old New York University graduate teamed up with his friend Jim Holahan to launch the company now known as AIN Publications. That fall, they produced three daily magazines for attendees at the annual convention of the National Business Aviation Association plus a post-show summary edition.
Those magazines were the world’s first high-quality, editorially respected aerospace-show dailies and, nearly half a century later, AIN continues to lead the field that it launched. The company now regularly sends large teams of employees around the globe to produce onsite daily magazines at aviation venues such as the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition in Geneva, Switzerland; the Farnborough [England] Airshow; the Dubai [UAE] Airshow; the Singapore Airshow; the Paris Airshow; the Middle East Business Aviation show in Dubai; and the Asian Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition in Shanghai. (Publications at the last event are produced partially in Chinese.) Onsite reporters also cover breaking news at many other aviation events in Russia, China, India, Europe, and the U.S. And the company continues to make major investments in pioneering ways of covering aerospace events, including exclusive video reports.
Today, AIN is the world’s most successful privately held business aviation trade publisher. The company, now directed and solely owned by Leach, has headquarters in Connecticut and New Jersey and offices in Washington, Los Angeles, Florida, London, and Paris. Besides publishing at conventions and airshows, AIN produces the monthly Aviation International News, which has long been the number-one magazine in its field worldwide. Since 2003, the company has also published Business Jet Traveler, a B2C magazine aimed at CEOs, high-net-worth individuals, and other users of business aircraft. BJT, as it is widely known, delivers six regular editions per year, plus two annual buyers’ guides, including one published in Shanghai in Chinese.
The magazines’ credibility and authoritative coverage have attracted large and growing audiences and helped the company to garner dozens of editorial awards in the Folio: Eddies/Ozzies competition, the American Society of Business Publication Editors’ Azbee Awards, and numerous other editorial contests.
