The Aviation Herald is an excellent website that has been around since 2008, which reports on aviation incidents and accidents. While I don’t know him personally, the site’s founder, Simon Hradecky, does an incredible job and service to the industry, and reports with absolutely no bias.
So along those lines, he has just shared the details of a lawsuit he has been dealing with since last year, which is kind of shocking. The cost of this took such a toll on him that he needed to sell the apartment he has lived in for 41 years, causing him to move into his office. This is just terrible.
In this post:
The Aviation Herald sued over airline safety report
In July 2025, The Aviation Herald reported on an incident involving a flight operated by Slovakian carrier Go2Sky, which was operating from Zakynthos, Greece (ZTH), to Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS).
The site initially reported that the flight had to divert due to an engine issue, which was based on a report from a passenger, as well as another reliable source. However, the following day, Hradecky received information that there had been no engine issues at all, and instead, it was a stab trim problem. Based on that evidence, he updated his report to reflect those correct details.
Hradecky of course acknowledges that his reports can sometimes have mistakes, but he’s about as accurate as they get when it comes to reporting on the details of aviation safety. Hradecky has reported on tens of thousands of flight incidents and accidents over the years, and thousands of those have involved engine issues, and those range from very minor to serious.
In November 2025, Hradecky received a notification from the court in Salzburg, telling him that Go2Sky had filed a lawsuit against him and his website for defamation and untrue statements, related to the above coverage.
They claimed damage of €15,000 due to defamation and loss of reputation, and they also wanted a preliminary injunction forbidding him to continue reporting this aircraft had an engine problem on that flight, because of the danger that he would repeat such statements.
The airline also argued that he was in control of social media channels that had spread this information, even ones he had nothing to do with. Then in December 2025, Hradecky had to fly to the first court hearing, where the carrier’s commercial director reportedly acknowledged they had not suffered any damage as a result of the coverage, and also confirmed that there had been a stab trim problem before takeoff, which had been signed off on, but then it happened again during the flight.
In April 2026, Go2Sky proposed a court issued conditional settlement, which came with another demand. The airline wanted The Aviation Herald to remove its reporting of a 2016 Go2Sky incident. The thing is, the airline hadn’t contested that coverage for nearly a decade, and it was also accurate based on reports from the Norwegian Accident Investigation Board. So at this point the airline was even trying to silence fully accurate reporting.
Hradecky drew a line in the sand there, and decided he wasn’t going to be bullied into removing a report from all the way back then about something that had been verified by authorities. As a result, he rejected the settlement.
Ultimately the two parties reached a settlement many months later, which included a financial penalty, and also The Aviation Herald having to put a note at the top of the website for a period of time about the incorrect reporting:
The statement published by us on 04.07.2025: “Incident: Go2Sky B738 at Zakynthos on Jun 29th 2025, engine trouble” is untrue and there had been no engine trouble of whatsoever nature. In consideration of the court proceedings held before Landesgericht Salzburg (Republic of Austria), file number: 5 Cg 133/25t, and the facts presented by Go2Sky, spol. s r.o., we, NOMIS SOFT Datenverarbeitung Gesellschaft m.b.H. as the media owner and Simon Hradecky as the author of the article published on 04.07.2025, hereby revoke this statement. See the Explanation of this statement
Hradecky concludes by saying that “it needs to be stated, that the entire legal cost were not covered by an insurance but needed to be paid by myself – in order to financially survive that blow I needed to sell my apartment, that I had lived in for 41 years and that had been my nest in all these years, and move into my office instead.”
I feel horribly for the founder of The Aviation Herald
Admittedly when you publish stuff online for a living, you open yourself up to potential legal action, so it’s important to be careful with what you report. At the same time, I find the basis of this lawsuit to be incredibly bizarre in the first place.
The Aviation Herald reports on aviation incidents and accidents with no bias, and has reported on thousands of engine issues over the years.
Obviously in this specific case, it was incorrect to report this as an engine issue rather than a stab trim problem, because sometimes details won’t quite be right. But… why does the airline care so much? It’s not like one type of issue is obviously worse than the other.
The airline then demanding that a post from 2016 be removed is just absurd, when that was also based on an investigation by regulators, who confirmed the reporting.
The only thing I can come up with here is that Go2Sky’s Wikipedia page lists two things in the “Incidents and accidents” section, and both link to The Aviation Herald. Maybe the airline just wants to act like it has never had any sort of an issue? Then again, virtually every airline has had some number of incidents, so none of this makes much sense to me.
Either way, it sure strikes me as very strong Streisand effect vibes, since a non-story is being turned into a story, and I don’t think the airline looks good here.
Bottom line
The Aviation Herald was sued by Slovakian airline Go2Sky over a safety report the site posted in 2025. A Go2Sky flight had to divert, and the initial report was that it was due to an engine issue, though after a day, the report was updated to claim it was actually due to a stab trim problem.
That seemingly really rubbed the airline the wrong way, and they ended up filing a lawsuit, and even tried to demand that previous (accurate) coverage from a decade earlier be removed. The site’s founder has been doing this for a long time, and this is the first time he has had to deal with a lawsuit… and it cost him dearly. I feel horribly for him.
What do you make of this aviation safety reporting lawsuit?
The Norwegian incident is brutal btw, and deserves a lot of attention. How often do you see cabin crew refuse to fly with the (Go2Sky's) cockpit crew?
Sorry for Simon. I kinda don't understand why he settled here, but the defamation laws in DACH can be quite brutal unfortunately.
He ought not pass on rumors from unidentified gossips .
Information ought to comment on vaguely-worded problems , not specific owners. For example, the N.Y. Post comments today on "street food in Cali." , not on specific owned stalls . Likewise , airline information ought to comment on unspecific airlines having problems , not on specific companies . Ben's post refers to a named Court ; he ought to refer to an unnamed Court . Ben's post about the hotel in the desert referred to...
Information ought to comment on vaguely-worded problems , not specific owners. For example, the N.Y. Post comments today on "street food in Cali." , not on specific owned stalls . Likewise , airline information ought to comment on unspecific airlines having problems , not on specific companies . Ben's post refers to a named Court ; he ought to refer to an unnamed Court . Ben's post about the hotel in the desert referred to a named hotel and a named influencer ; he ought to have referred to an unnamed hotel and an unnamed influencer . Because , after all , it was merely a hotel in the desert . In this instance , the subject ought to have stayed in his unnamed apartment , and not passed on rumors from unknown people .
He lives in Austria, he was sued in Austria? The story could be more clear about the geography of all this.
Passengers are not reliable sources. Does he contact the airline before publishing? That is the main difference between bloggers and journalists -- they don't see any obligation to report both sides.
Yes, he's Austrian and the company that publishes AvHerald is based in Salzburg so it falls under Austrian jurisdiction and that's where he was sued.
1990_ loves these kind of European justice.
Thanks for including the "_" Bah! Naw, for these stories, I'd usually prefer a meme, like, to reference the 2004 comedy, EuroTrip... *hands Simon a nickel* "I quit. I open my own (aviation website)!"
I respect whatever self proclaimed identity or pronouns you prefer.
I don't discriminate people including people with "_".
But you have to admit, you favor the airline for bringing justice to defamation.