Thanks to ThisDayin History.com for the reminder that on this day, February 7, back in 1964, Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow landed at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport with its special cargo of Beatles.
It was the first visit to the United States by the Beatles, a British rock-and-roll quartet that had just scored its first No. 1 U.S. hit six days before with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” At Kennedy, the “Fab Four”–dressed in mod suits and sporting their trademark pudding bowl haircuts–were greeted by 3,000 screaming fans who caused a near riot when the boys stepped off their plane and onto American soil.
Here’s a great video using clips from that day:
Two days after their arrival at JFK, the Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Today (Tuesday, February 2, 2010), airline representatives will be at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) and Portland International Airport (PDX) asking passengers to help cheer on speed skater and Pacific Northwest native Apolo Ohno by “Apolo-izing” themselves with free stick-on Apolo Ohno ‘soul patches.’
And don’t worry if you’re not planning to be at either of those airports on Tuesday.
Like the folks pictured above, you can go on-line and “Apolo-ize’ yourself anytime with the handy Apolo-ize tool.
The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics kick off in just a few weeks and Vancouver International Airport (YVR) is getting ready to welcome more than 230,000 athletes and Olympics-bound visitors. Actually, the airport has been sprucing up for quite a while. In addition to its swanky new Observation Gallery, the airport has had these giant Olympic rings on site since last spring.
The installation is almost 46 feet tall, weighs more than 9,000 pounds and has 20,385 individual LED lights. Here’s a video that shows the installation process and some of the colored-patterns that can light up the sky.
In other shiny news, the folks at Air New Zealand unveiled their “Skycouch” today. It’s a specially designed row of three seats that can transform into a flat space suitable for stretching out and sleeping. That is of course, if you’re not too tall, you don’t mind snuggling up with your seatmate, and you have purchased the entire row. (The airline says it will sell you third seat at a discount if you’ve purchased the other two).
(Photo courtesy Air New Zealand)
Twenty-two sets of Skycouch seats will be available on Air New Zealand’s new Boeing 777-300 ER planes, which will arrive in November.
And since this is the airline that sponsored a recent Matchmaking flight and created an adorable “nearly naked” commercial and safety video, I fully expect the airline to offer a program to find travelers the perfect snuggle-mate for these flights.
Otherwise- why bother?
Along with the Skycouch and other new amenities, the airline also introduced upgrades for the Premium Economy cabin, including the cool-looking “Spaceseats” you can see in the airline’s promo video.
So what do you think? “Groundbreaking” or just really darn cool?
The Jewish holiday of Hanukah starts this Friday, December 11 and EL AL, Israel’s national airline, will be serving passengers special holiday treats.
The airline expects to use 1,375 potatoes, 6,600 ounces of raspberry jam, and 68 cups of cinnamon to make the traditional jelly donuts (sufganiot ) and potato pancakes (latkes) that will be served on flights between New York (JFK and Newark) and Israel. These treats will also be served in the airline’s premium class airport lounges throughout the world.
In a testament to the power of social media – or the fact that aviation geeks are quick on the trigger – the free tickets for the event “sold out” in less than a minute.
Part of the attraction: attendees were promised a chance at winning gift cards from Alaska Airlines, a spiffy model of an Alaska Airlines 737-900, and – get this – two tickets on the 1st 787 flight.
No one was allowed to bring cameras or telephones with cameras on the tour. So I can’t show you photos of new 787 Dreamliner airplanes in production. I did take a notepad along. But sadly, I can’t draw.
Next time, I’m taking a sketch artist along, but in the meantime, here’s a better drawing of the airplane, courtesy of the CD that tour guide Mike (friendly, smart, informative and no where near as corny as he could have been given his audience) handed each of us at the end of the tour.
And here’s a photo of the 787 Dreamliner plane that should be taking off any moment now. Photo courtesy Aviation Geekfest attendee and Twitter user @imperfectsense.
