I have had this magazine for well over 20 years. It does a good job of reviewing new airplanes, however it concentrates on the high end planes, and gives a good, but small, coverage of the latest (month old) aviation news. It also gives some touchy feely articles on flying from the corporate, private, technical, and professional aspect.

I believe it is lacking in in-depth coverage of future systems, long term reviews of airplanes, and also, long term upgrades of older airplanes. When they do cover used airplanes, it is not in-depth like the new airplanes and they do not go into third party vendors for additional items as much as I would like.

Overall, it is a good magazine, not great. I would still recommend it for one year to see if you like it also.

PS - If you read it enough, I get the impression that they are overly conservative on safety yet in real life, I believe they fly normally.

I ordered this magazine at the end of june. We are at the beginning of August and I still haven't seen it.

What can I say? This magazine is the gold standard for popular aviation journalism.

Flying magazine sets a gold standard for general aviation magazines. It is not perfect -- the maybe cozy relationship with advertisers, it's hard to do one thing perfectly when you cover such a large subject, airline pilots detect a bias against big iron, sometimes it is a little too glossy -- but it covers the whole world of piston and personal airplane flying.

In the past, Len Morgan and Richard Bach and Ernie Gann and many others wrote for Flying. Right now, for my money, the best writers are Lane Wallace and Peter Garrison. With Flying, you get them every month. For private pilots, the only magazine that directly compares is the excellent AOPA Pilot, but you will get that magazine if you join AOPA. The best way to get Flying is to subscribe, as it's a huge savings over buying it retail. If you are not sure it's for you, go buy one at the supermarket or bookstore and then come back and subscribe for a year.

Great magazine for private and professional pilots.