Recycling is all the rage at airports these days.

Colored bins marked glass, paper and trash are lined up in most gate areas.

Used cooking oil from many food courts is transformed into fuel.

And at airports in Seattle and Portland, composted coffee grounds become part of the landscaping.

Now the Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) has come up with a creative way to recycle yard waste and help animals.

The airport has teamed up with the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens to provide tree clippings and shrubbery, called browse, [word of the day!] for the zoo’s animals.

Turns out that the airport grounds are an ideal source of the natural vegetation eaten by mammals such as giraffe, elephant, okapi and great apes.  The airport was having a hard time finding enough local ‘browse’ for its hungry critters, and the airport had plenty to spare.

Now, airport officials say, visitors to the giraffe and elephant exhibits, especially, will get to see the animals eating the browse collected that morning from airport property.

Nice!

Categories: Airports, Recycling
4 Comments »

Poke around the Burlington International Airport website and you’ll find out about the free wireless Internet access, the free charging stations (in the North concourse only), the gift shops, the snack bars, and the pre-security One Flight Up Restaurant.

Sadly, you won’t find anything about the public art and changing exhibitions at the airport. For that, you’ll either need to actually be at the airport or get Sara Katz of Burlington City Arts to send you some pictures.

Yesterday, I posted some images of Sky Gates, the murals John Anderson made for four airport skylights.  Ms. Katz was kind enough to send one more photo to share with you.

I also received this photo of Maple, Apple, Birch by Elizabeth Billings & Andrea Wasserman, along with a description of the installation that makes it – and Vermont – sound so very welcoming and inviting.

“Maple, Apple, Birch illustrates the Vermont landscape with hand-carved planks of red maple and panels of printed and woven birch veneer. The text is taken from contemporary poems by Cora Brooks of Chelsea and excerpts from the 1800’s diary of Harriet Warren Vail of Pomfret. The carved wooden panels of apple trees and poems, both past and present, depict a time and season that are fundamental to the legacy of Vermont.”

Categories: Art
No Comments »

If you’re going to be out and about in airports this week, here are some things to look for:

At Los Angeles International Airport, there are more than 25 paintings in Op Collage, a new exhibition of abstract forms by artist Yong Sin made from acrylic, masking tape, paper and wood. Look for them in Terminal 1, post-security, by Gates 1 and 2 through the May 2010.

And while its website doesn’t give you a clue about what you’ll find inside, Vermont’s Burlington International Airport (BTV) has some really impressive artwork on-site, including John Anderson’s Skygates: four large murals placed in the the airport skylights. Each mural has its own color theme and content, including “alphabets and notational systems from around the world (red), pictographs and icons from art and cultural history (green), scientific diagrams and formulas (yellow) and cosmology (blue).”

Poking around today I see mention of other permanent and temporary work at BTV and I’ll circle back later in the week with some better images. But in the meantime, here’s just a peek at what’s inside.

Categories: Art
No Comments »

Each Sunday here at Stuck at The Airport we take a look at some of the fun, ideally offbeat, items for sale at airports for about $10.  This week, Claire Stern sent along some items from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX). My favorites include some of the candies made by the Phoenix-based Cactus Candy Company which makes saguaro-shaped lollipops and this sweet, chewy Prickly Pear Cactus Candy.

And these three-legged chonchitos, which hail from from the village of Pomaire, Chile. They are supposed to bring good luck and are traditionally given to friends as a token of goodwill and love, but since they’re only $5.99 a piece, I’d probably buy a few for my friends and make sure to keep one for myself.

Have you had the good fortune to find a great souvenir while you were stuck at the airport? If so, please take a photo and send it along. It may end up featured on a future edition of Souvenir Sunday.

Categories: Shopping, Souvenir Sunday, Souvenirs, Uncategorized
No Comments »

For my At the Airport column on USAToday.com this month, Airport wars escalate with attack ads aimed at rivals, I wrote about a new YouTube video about San Francisco International Airport, that features cameo appearances by SF  Mayor Gavin Newsom and Marion & Vivian Brown, the kooky 83-year-old identical twins who have become beloved San Francisco icons.  Designed to promote SFO as the connecting hub of choice for travelers coming to the United States from New Zealand or Australia, the short video compares SFO’s airy, international terminal to an unnamed airport simply referred to as “the bad airport.”

An SFO spokesperson insists there is no specific “bad airport,” but given the target market I’d guess, oh… that LAX is the airport campaign designers had in mind.

Other airports have no problem calling out the competitor they’re trashing by name. Canada’s Edmonton International Airport recently rolled out a “Stop the Calgary Habit” campaign, urging residents of central and northern Alberta to stop connecting through or driving to Calgary International Airport.  The campaign has tag line: “When you go south, so does your air service,”; videos showing repentant passengers; and a tool kit that includes an “Emergency Hypno Cure” to help break the habit.

Of course, there was the challenge Air New Zealand threw down to Southwest Airlines.  Air New Zealand  produced a series of cheeky commercials and an in-flight safety video that showed airline employees dressed in nothing but cleverly applied body paint.  Then ANZ challenged Southwest Airlines to do the same:

Southwest’s answer?  “We’d rather rap”:

Now we have two airlines trading smackdown videos.  Air Tran Airways and Southwest.  See how Southwest started it.

Air Tran’s response?

“We thought about it and thought about it and decided to not respond at all. After all, focusing on running the best low-cost carrier in America is enough to keep us busy.  BUT…if we were to respond, it might look something like this:”

Can’t wait to see what’s next!

Categories: Advertising, Air Travel, Airlines, Airports, Baggage, Complaints, Fun Stuff
1 Comment »