Flightbook: Niche Notebook Review

These seemingly specialty-focused, USA-made notebooks from Halaby aren’t just for aviation fans. The interesting graphics, lightweight aspect and nice inside graph paper make them viable for any kind of use. But as you’re about to see, it helps to be into flying and airplanes, since there’s a lot of useful date on the covers. I could easily see, however, using these as travel log notebooks for any adventurer who flies. Would make a highly topical way to collect notes and whatnot on your journeys.

The founder of Halaby envisioned specialized notebooks and travel goods for global adventurers and is a committed traveler, pilot and amateur aviation photographer (check out some of his amazing photos). Halaby has other notebooks available, such as the large A4 that we also received which will be in an upcoming review. Although I don’t see them listed in the shop at the moment, they do have a tin of some pretty cool airplane paper clips.

The Flightbook™ pocket notebooks come in four colors with striking complimentary silver or gold inks. The outside sturdy covers wraps around 52 graph pages with three-staple binding. In testing the paper, it worked well from graphite to gel to ballpoint, even with a fountain pen! Granted with lighter weight 50# paper, there is some show-through, but no bleed-through. The graphite did not smear and the fountain pen ink I used did not feather. For general notetaking, the Flightbook™ paper works fine.

Each notebook contains aviation-specific information. The front covers list the ICAO radiotelephony alphabet while the inside front cover has a speed conversion table, misc. conversion, ICAO standard atmosphere information, user information and an interesting fine print section! The back cover depict silhouettes of major commercial jet aircraft and basic specs, while inside the back cover is an ICAO aircraft registration prefixes table. Don’t worry readers, there won’t be a quiz later on this stuff! But if you’re into aircraft, these could be mighty handy at times.

The quality of the notebooks is good as well and come two in a pack with a belly band and enclosed in shrinkwrap. I think these would be a great addition to the stash of any notebook-loving aviation fan, traveler, or anyone wanting a lightweight, interesting and different pocket notebook. You can buy them direct from Halaby’s online shop.

Giveaway

This time, thanks to the generosity of Halaby for providing review samples, TWO readers will each receive a pocket notebook pack (one blue, one black, both with silver cover ink) and some of the cool airplane paper clips. Contest open to U.S. addresses only and closes Sunday, Oct. 4 at midnight EST. All entries will be verified, so behave! 😉

And the winners are…Judi Delgado and Adam Wickert! Congratulations to them and they’ll be getting their Flightbook packs and airplane paperclips shortly. Thanks to everyone who entered!