Our policy
How we use AI
Some of our news reports are drafted by AI from published sources. This page explains each step, what a person always checks, what AI never does here, and how to tell us when we get something wrong.
Last updated 4 October 2026
In short. Some of our news reports are drafted by AI from published sources, checked by a second AI pass, and in some cases read by our editor before publication. Accident and Emergency reports, and any analysis piece drafted by AI, are always read by a person first. Every AI-assisted report carries a label that links here.
How a report is made
We find the story
Our system watches the feeds of named aviation and news outlets and looks for stories that more than one outlet is carrying. A story carried by a single outlet is normally left alone.
AI drafts the article
A language model, Anthropic's Claude, writes a draft from the full text of those sources, in our house style. Every factual claim is linked to the source it came from, inside the article.
A second AI pass checks it
A separate request compares the draft with the sources, claim by claim. It flags anything the sources do not support, any number or date that differs from them, any quotation or person's name that is not in them, and any guess about the cause of an accident or emergency. A draft with a serious problem is rejected and never published.
A person decides what goes live
Accident and Emergency reports are always read by our editor before they are published. So is any analysis piece drafted by AI, and any draft the checker holds back for a closer look. Other news reports that pass both checks may be published without a person reading them first.
We label it
Every AI-assisted report ends with a line saying so, linking to this page, so you can always tell.
What AI does not do here
- It does not invent quotations, people or sources. Anything it writes must come from the sources it was given.
- It does not speculate about why an aircraft crashed or declared an emergency. We wait for the airline or investigators.
- It does not publish an Accident and Emergency report on its own. A person reads those first.
- It does not publish an analysis piece on its own. Analysis drafted by AI is saved for our editor, who reads each one first.
- It does not create images of real events. We do not use AI image generators.
- It never sees our readers' personal information. It is given the text of articles and their sources, and nothing else.
Our Aero Insight magazine and our guides are written and edited by our editor. When there is no new story to report, we may also draft an analysis piece with AI from the last few days' published sources. It uses the same sources and the same checks as a news report, is labelled as AI-assisted analysis, and is never published until our editor has read it.
Pictures, maps and data
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons, under free licences, or from Planespotters, where the photographer is credited and linked. Each credit appears under the picture.
When there is no suitable licensed photograph, a report may carry a simple title card instead. That is a graphic drawn from the headline. It is not a photograph and is not presented as one.
The flight path maps on incident reports are drawn from tracking data supplied by Flightradar24, shown on OpenStreetMap, and credited in the caption.
Updates
When a story develops we add a dated update to the top of the original article, rather than quietly rewriting it. Updates are checked against their sources in the same way as the article itself. Updates to Accident and Emergency reports are reviewed by our editor before they are added.
Corrections and complaints
If you think we have got something wrong, please tell us. We aim to reply within two working days.
- Send us a link to the article and say what you think is wrong. The source of the right information helps.
- We check it against the sources. If we have made an error, we correct the article.
- A correction that matters carries a dated note on the article saying what changed. Obvious typing mistakes are fixed without a note.
- If we decide the article is right, we will tell you why.
If you are a publisher, photographer or data provider and believe we have used your work in a way you did not intend, email the same address and we will put it right promptly.
Who is responsible
James Field, founder and editor of The Aviation Hub, is responsible for everything published here, whether or not AI helped to draft it. About The Aviation Hub · Editorial standards
We will update this page whenever our process changes.
Social posts and alerts
The headlines and short summaries we post to social media are drafted with AI from the published article and posted automatically. Push notifications for breaking Accident and Emergency reports go out only after a person has published the report.