Matt Leedham

For two decades, Jenny Piper led the Business Publishing Group alongside her husband Bruce, turning a daily travel bulletin into a publishing stable that the trade read every morning without thinking twice about how it got there. Theirs was a true husband-and-wife combo. Bruce told the news; Jenny, for the most part, ran the show from behind the scenes. The bylines belonged to others, but the operation was hers. Jenny passed away last week after a courageous fight.

For the Australian travel trade, the most telling detail in the Iran ceasefire isn’t necessarily about oil tankers. It’s the transit time a client spends airside in one of the Middle Eastern airport hubs on the way to Europe this summer, and whether their insurance covers a minute of it. The United States and Iran have reached an initial agreement to extend their ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with talks toward a permanent settlement still to come.

After more than 50 years of explaining aviation to the world, one of its great storytellers has taken his final flight, and the industry he loved is in mourning. When an aircraft went missing, a route opened, or an airline stumbled, it was Thomas that the world’s newsrooms hurriedly called first. The Perth-based journalist, who died on Tuesday, was sought out by media organisations around the world, from CNN and the BBC to ABC and Bloomberg, whenever aviation made headlines.