Managing Editor David Donald Frequency Weekly First issue 1997 | Categories Aviation Publisher Stan Morse Final issue
— Number 2002
218 | |
World Aircraft Information Files (WAIF) is a weekly partwork magazine published by Bright Star Publications (part of Midsummer Books) in the United Kingdom. Each issue was priced at £1.70 for issues 1–163, and £1.80 for issues 164–218. Altogether, there were 218 issues in the complete set, which completed in 2002. Originally advertised as having 200 issues, the run was extended to 218 issues when approximately 576 pages were missing from the collection. An index to the complete series was given in the final issue.
Contents
Overview
Published in 218 weekly parts, each issue comprised 32 pages, the same large page size as World Airpower Journal and Wings of Fame. The pages were organised as a series of pull-out reference files to be slotted into ring binders.
In total there were 1041 file subjects – although there were only 1008 numbered files. During the production of the partwork, the publishers realised that some aeroplanes and airlines were missed from the index, necessitating additions. Hence, 'missing' files were numbered by adding the prefix "a" (and "b", "c" or "d" where necessary) after the previous file number – for example, between Files 591 (Air Niugini) and 592 (Air Transat) is 591a (Air Seychelles).
Subject coverage
The subjects covered are grouped into 13 categories as follows:
Depth of coverage
Since each subject was covered in only 2 or 4 sides (in a "file"), the depth of coverage could be limited, although for many subjects, this was overcome by including many sheets on different aspects of the same subject (for example, different variants, different uses, etc.).
The A-Z of aircraft was based on previous Aerospace Publishing publications with some updating. The bias towards aircraft types early in the alphabet was accentuated in the partwork, with letters A through F making up fully 64% of the total while letters P through Z made up 9%.