ROTOR Daily to rebrand, relaunch as VAI Daily

September 24, 2024

VAI News

3 Minutes

Flagship newsletter has provided daily updates to VAI members and the rotorcraft community for decades.

For many years, Helicopter Association International (HAI), now Vertical Aviation International (VAI), produced its ROTOR Daily newsletter as a service to the helicopter industry. We would begin our day early, searching the Web for what we felt were the most important news stories of the day for the rotorcraft community. We felt it was vital to include information such as FAA and international airworthiness directives, accident reports, safety information, and regulatory news.

We’d promote news from our members, as well, initially posting member press releases in the “Industry News” category before establishing a dedicated “Member News” section. We’d also share original stories produced by VAI staff and contributors about our members, including “Member Monday” articles that later evolved into “Member Spotlight” stories such as today’s piece about Australian tool manufacturer Henchman.

Sometimes, we’d include a heartwarming or offbeat story that we simply thought was fun to share, and we always shared cool photos of helicopters in the “Today’s Photo” feature.

Honestly, no one at VAI remembers exactly when HAI first produced ROTOR Daily, although we are reasonably certain it was the early 2000s. (Part of the ethereal nature of the digital age is the lack of hard reminders of such milestones.) Nevertheless, it is safe to state that we have distributed tens of thousands of stories since the turn of the century, distributing our modest news aggregator nearly every US business day. Our numbers have ebbed and surged, but we currently send ROTOR Daily to more than 40,000 subscribers.

Second Act
Today marks the final edition of ROTOR Daily—but don’t worry or be sad, as it will return in updated form in a few days. As part of our ongoing rebranding project this year, we are changing its name to better reflect the VAI brand. The inaugural edition of VAI Daily will launch next week, on Tuesday, Oct. 1. While it might have a new name, and some category names will change slightly, we are not planning any wholesale changes to the news coverage that we bring our members and the vertical aviation community each day. VAI Daily will still carry the national and international news that is most important to our industry.

Due to technical issues with launching our new website and the news distribution module we use to issue our daily news aggregator, VAI Daily subscribers will not receive a newsletter from Wednesday, Sep. 25, through Monday, Sep. 30, before it returns on Tuesday, Oct. 1. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we move forward with this transition, and we hope you enjoy reading VAI Daily as much as you have enjoyed ROTOR Daily.