Stopping Traffic

For more than three decades, Gordon Reid charted the comings and goings of aircraft for Australian Aviation, until he hung up his keyboard earlier this year. To planespotters, the softly spoken Scotsman was the ultimate enthusiast. To industry execs, he provided the inside scoop of rivals’ plans. But his understated style hid a giddy obsession. To mark his departure, Adam Thorn gets to know the man behind our greatest, and most successful, column

To the untrained eye, each edition of Traffic was nothing more than a jumble of codes and dates, but to planespotting enthusiasts, each told a story. The first entry of the very last instalment, published in edition 376, was a blockbuster: 

“In this issue, we report the delivery of two 787-9s to Qantas. 

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