Air Cargo Week’s much admired and longest-serving editor, Ian Martin Jones, has passed away after a short illness. He was 72 years of age.
Considered by many as a true gentlemen in the airfreight media, Jones joined the newspaper in 1998 and occupied the editor’s seat for 13 years, during which time he steered it through the 9/11 fallout and the global financial crisis of 2007/8.
He long used his middle name to distinguish himself from the many other Ian Jones’s across many fields. This is how he became universally known as IMJ.
Jones had been in the editorial business for half a century, including a 10-year period in Fleet Street and nearly 30 years editing publications covering air, sea and multimodal freight logistics.
He was presented with the Seahorse Life-Time Achievement Award in 2012 and he will be sadly missed by those Seahorse members who knew him. He became editor of Air Cargo Week shortly after its September 1998 launch, having previously edited Handy Shipping Guide. He remained at his post at ACW for 666 consecutive issues. He also edited Air Logistics China and Air Logistics Management.
In October 2012, he took on the role of editor at Heavy Lift and Project Forwarding International magazine, where he remained until retirement in 2015.
He was born in Wiltshire of Welsh parentage but grew up in London. He attended Henry Thornton Grammar School in Clapham in southwest London. Jones is survived by his sister and second wife, Anne Ruddock Jones, whom he married in 2003.
ACW will publish an appreciation of IMJ, his talents and life, in our issue of July 8.
