A question for AusBT, why do you guys often run photos of airline crew for articles that are about routes or frequent flyer programs or general 'airline' stories?

A question for AusBT, why do you guys often run photos of airline crew for articles that are about routes or frequent flyer programs or general 'airline' stories?

What kind of question is that?

It's a fair question.  I have to say that new crew uniform stories are the least interesting stories for me.  After all, it's the Australian BUSINESS Traveller blog.

I beg to differ.

I really enjoy how this website gives an all round view on whats happening in the global aviation world.

I enjoy them too

Think about it this way: if AusBT only publishes articles on routes, frequent flyer programs or 'general airline' stories, there probably be only one article per day or a few in a week. Even if you don't like or look through the photo tours, it is important that they are there so people know what to expect when they fly a certain airline.

Looking at Al's original question, I think he's asking not about articles on crew uniforms per se but why we "often run photos of airline crew for articles that are about routes or frequent flyer programs or general 'airline' stories?".

One example of this from yesterday was China Southern upgrades Sydney flights with lie-flat beds, where the story was about CZ's new A330 with lie-flat business class seats but the feature photo was of some CZ crew.

The reason for that and other similar photos is manifold. The alternative in the CZ instance would be a photo of a CA A330 or the seats.

However, we usually have more than enough photos of planes and seats on the front page (especially on the back of the series of stories on SQ's new seats and BA's A380/B787), and I'm keen to avoid AusBT presenting readers with a stream of photos of aircraft and seats – especially the former, because then we come of looking like an aviation site that's about planes.

Using photos of crew gives AusBT a friendlier, more approachable face than if we just have pics of planes, and it adds variety to the five-story feature block on the home page.

These pics also come in handy as alternatives to routes (for which we'd like have a photo of a plane the tail of a plane with recogniseable airline livery, or a scenic shot of the city which the route ends at) and frequent flyer schemes (photos of freq flyer cards, which are not always easy to come by), airline alliances and general airline stories.

As to uniform stories themselves: they're part of the overall mix and add some 'colour' to our coverage. They're an aspect of travel to which everybody can relate and on which everyone has an opinion, as well as most people being interested in them. They're also one of the main 'touchpoints' of an airline to the traveller, and that falls into the 'passenger experience' side of things which we cover, as we are less 'aviation/industry' and more for the end-user/traveller.