Flying.com sells for $1.1 million

UsedAirplanes.com CEO Mark J Horne announced today that his company has bought Flying.com for a solid $1.1 million USD. Regarding the sale, he stated:

Owning a domain name of this caliber will allow us to expand our talents deeper in the aviation business and build upon the success of UsedAirplanes.com. The word “flying” is known and understood by virtually every person and the word is used in every area within the aviation industry. In addition, Google, Yahoo and Bing process approximately 20 million search queries for the word “flying” every month.

Domain sales like this often go unnoticed because they are done in private between two companies. In this case, the domain industry was at the mercy of Used Airplanes, Inc. to come forward with information about the sale.

The domain will be used to create a social media site for the aviation community. The website will also be the first to be developed from the group-up with compatibility for the Apple iPad in mind.

In addition, pilot.com.com has sold for $300,000 USD. The identity of the buyer has not been released. It’s not at all uncommon for a company to acquire multiple premium names at once, so maybe Used Airplanes had a hand in this sale as well?

Data center outage causes major flight delays

A system error took down the National Airspace Data Interchange Network (NADIN), a multi-billion dollar data center operated by the FAA, for several hours yesterday. The system outage made thousands of airline flight plans unavailable, meaning thousands of planes could not take off in the United States until the issue was fixed.

The problem has been linked to a router that went down after routine scheduled maintenance. The data center did have a back-up in place, but it failed to start after the main router failed.

This is NADIN’s fourth outage since its introduction in 2002. The system has been heavily criticized for its high cost and poor reliability.

Source | Computer World

Jets.com sells for $375,000

Whether you fly in one on vacation, physically fly one yourself, or are rich enough to own one, jets are a popular method of transportation. Keeping that in mind, it’s not a surprise that jets.com sold today for $375,000 USD, or £228,952.

Also of note is the sale of tradetracker.com for €100,000 ($147,940 USD). Other recent sales include:

production.com- $70,000
222.com- $49,000
digiweb.com- $25,000
virtualimmortality.com- $25,000
ukmail.com- £10,000

Production.com I can understand, but virtualimmortality.com?

Source | Domain Name News

Flight447.com registered two years before plane crash

On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 created a new page in history when it crashed off the coast of Brazil on its way to Paris. Eager to cash in on public interest, domainers flocked to register any domain bearing the flight’s name. Many were surprised to find out, however, that flight447.com was unavailable, registered since 2007.

The owner is Kari Bian, an Iranian film producer residing in the United States whose unfortunate registration choice has led some to speculate that he was somehow involved with the crash. “I have nothing to do with this and I feel very bad for this flight,” he said.

Bian has yet to be investigated or questioned by authorities regarding the accident. He owns a number of other airline flight domains, and has no intention of selling flight447.com.

Source | EFE

Photo | Flickr

Enlargement.com sells for £33,540

Open the your email spam folder and you know what you’ll find. In a society where over-the-hill men seem to base their worth solely on how hard they can make their wives moan, it’s no surprise that Enlargement.com sold today for £33,540 ($56,000 USD). Hopefully the new owner is happy with himself.

Enlargement.com is the highest-selling name to appear at public auction ever in this niche. The only other sale that can compare is SmallPenis.com, which comes up a bit short after selling for £15,871 ($26,500 USD) in 2007.

Also of note this Friday is the sale of Aileron.com for £12,577 ($21,000 USD). According to Wikipedia, ailerons are flaps at the end of aircraft wings used to control the plane during a roll. Considering how tiny the market for this part must be, I think the seller made a killing.

Source | Domain News

Photo | Flickr