Gone With The Wind: Flying.com Sells For $1.1 Million

We’ve seen (and reported on) a couple of premium .com domain names that were sold for 7 or even 8 figure sums in recent times (off the top of my head: Insure.com for $16 million, Toys.com for $5.1 million, Candy.com for $3 million, Ad.com for $1.4 million, and so on).

This morning, a company called UsedAirplanes, Inc. purchased the domain name Flying.com and intends to set up a dedicated site displaying all of its the used airplanes and aircraft from the company’s flagship website UsedAirplanes.com as of June 2010.

Says Mark J Horne, President & CEO of UsedAirplanes:

“Owning a domain name of this caliper (SIC) will allow us to expand our talents deeper in the aviation business and build upon the success of UsedAirplanes.com. The word “flying” is known and understood by virtually every person and the word is used in every area within the aviation industry. In addition, Google, Yahoo and Bing process approximately 20 million search queries for the word “flying” every month.”

That doesn’t, of course, necessarily mean that people who search for this particular keyword are going to wind up on Flying.com, and even if they do there’s only a small chance that they’d be interested in purchasing a Cessna or two. In that regard, it seems like a bit of an expensive purchase to make – for comparison, the domain name Fly.com was sold to Travelzoo for about $1.8 million last year and now directs to a website where people can compare hundreds of travel sites in one search.

Regardless of its (imo) steep price, UsedAirplanes says it is currently looking to acquire more digital media companies and websites.

And in case you’re interested in its history: Flying.com has been online since 1994 and has provided information and links to and within the aviation industry up until September 2009, when it was bought for an undisclosed amount (although the price on the day of the sale was set to $845,000, apparently). The identity of the seller is unknown.

The first (beta) version of the new Flying.com will be launched on June 1, 2010, and according to the placeholder website that’s live today it will be “the first community and social media based portal for flying”. UsedAirplanes says it will provide a new and additional sales channel for the brokers that currently list their inventory on their main website.

And for all you iPad owners out there: the company promises that the new website will be developed with Apple’s new tablet in mind from the ground up (pun intended).