About us

Avionicks is a website on which nicknames of aircraft can be found. Next to that, photos of the aircraft can be uploaded by our users.

Avionicks is an acronym for aviation nicknames. At the same time however, it is a kind of a funny name too, since avionics are the instruments in the cockpit from which the pilots read the altitude, speed, heading, etc.. Therefore, we think this name is easy to remember as well as focused on the subject of the website.

Avionicks started as a website named Aircraft InfoBase, and from the end of January 2005 Aircraft InfoBase could be found at the URL: www.aircraftinfobase.net. Quickly after development on the website started: it got new sections, changed its design, the number of aircraft names on the website started to grow and the option was added to add photos. Years of silent, but steady, growth followed. From the end of 2009, the website changed its name to Avionicks, including a new URL: www.avionicks.net.

Below you can read how it started, how it developed after that and what happens nowadays.

How it all started...

During a day out to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in the summer of 2004 I noticed that the aircraft of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines were all wearing a name on their nose. After observing a few of those aircraft, which apparently were all wearing a unique name, I thought it might be nice to write down what aircraft was wearing which name. Although that day I only saw a few of those aircraft (if only because the fleet of KLM is pretty large), I wanted to know all of them. When I came back home again, I turned on my computer and started to search on the internet for a list of those KLM names. However, it was not very easy to find them. Most sites only contained a few names and I had to watch photos to get to know the names I was still missing. During my search however, I also found out that some other airlines had given names to their aircraft too. This gave the opportunity to enlarge my collection even further and that next time when I would be at an airport I could look for more aircraft than only those of KLM to collect names.

The collection was growing and in order to get all names clearly together I put them in a spreadsheet. At that time I also had a little personal website, and I decided to put those few spreadsheets on my little website. I was very pleased with it, but at the end of 2004 I started to search for more names of more airlines. This resulted in more spreadsheets, that I also put on my little website. There was only one problem: all these spreadsheets were quite big too download and there wasn't a possibility to search or order them, let alone view multiple spreadsheets at once. Therefore I decided to go 'big' and I ordered webspace and the domain www.aircraftinfobase.net.

From there it all went very fast. It took me a few days(!) to put all information from the spreadsheet collection into the database of the website. I designed a whole new website and made scripts for searching and viewing the database. In those early days you could only view the information (such as name, type, registration and airline) of an aircraft, but what you could not see were photos. So after a few weeks I added that feature to the site too. The database kept growing with new information, new features were added to the site and photos were coming in.

By Laurens

Avionicks

Since Aircraft InfoBase was getting bigger and bigger, but in a way that only kept the newest and best photos, we decided early 2008 that the website should change in some aspects.

First of all, we wanted to keep all the photos and so create a larger database, hence improving in quantity but still maintaining the quality. Secondly, the name of the website needed to change. Aircraft InfoBase was too long and not focused enough on the subject of the website, hence hard to memorize. The new name should be short and consise. After some brainstorming Dag came up with the current name of the website: Avionicks, being an acronym for aviation nicknames and at the same time being a familiar word in aviation (although being spelled without the 'k').

From this point on, the website was redesigned in its layout and scripting to suit its new functions. The whole website has become more focused on its goal: providing information on names of aircraft.

... and how it keeps on growing!

Avionicks is currently running thanks to its staff, but even more thanks to its contributors (being photographers and spotters). Thanks to all these people the database is kept up to date and new photos are added frequently. This makes Avionicks an active and growing community, which we hope will continue in the coming years. There are still many features that could be implemented that make the website more active and more interesting, so stay with us. There is more to come!