A while back, Helsinki Airport and Finnair turned an airport runway into a skatepark.
That worked out so well, they’re doing it again:
On May 24, Finnair and Helsinki Airport (HEL) will host Runway 2 – a fashion show featuring work by top designers from around the world presented on an airport runway.
The event is a Match Made in HEL and will feature the work of yet-to-be announced fashion designers from China, Korea, Japan, the UK, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
Sounds like great fun. Especially if the planes landing and taking off that day use the other runway…
Sleep pods have arrived (again) at Helsinki Airport in Finland.
Back in 2013, the airport ran a test program that included several free rest and relax options.
Travelers favored sleep pods over larger rest areas and that has led to the installation of 19 GoSleep pods at the airport.
Each pod consists of an ergonomic seat that can be turned into a bed. Pillows and blankets are available, carry-on luggage can be stored under the seat and there’s a pull-up cover designed to block out light and noise.
As a bonus – there’s a power plug in each sleep pod for charging phones and laptops.
Sound cozy?
The cost of checking into the sleep pod seems pretty reasonable: 9 Euro per hour – at current exchange rates, about US $10.
Admit it: even if you’re not a skateboarder, you’ve looked down those long airport corridors and thought about how cool it would be to cover those distances on a skateboard.
Now Finland’s Helsinki Airport is going to give a select few skateboarders that chance. And more.
As part of a promotion highlighting the airport as a transfer point, on October 12 and 13 Finavia and Finnair are hosting the Match made in HEL skateboarding invitational – which will turn the airport over Finnish professional skateboarder Arto Saari and skateboarders from Asia and Europe.
Want to join them? Skateboarders can apply by sharing their skate videos at matchmadeinHEL.com and four will be chosen.
September is National Yoga Month, which makes it great timing for the Chicago Department of Aviation to open the promised yoga room at Midway International Airport.
Located on Concourse C, Midway’s new yoga room has a sustainable bamboo wood floor, floor to ceiling mirrors on one wall, exercise mats and an area to store personal articles and garments. There are frosted windows on one side of the room to let in natural light and to provide a bit of privacy. There’s also a wall-mounted video monitor showing yoga exercise techniques and nature scenes, all with an audio plays soothing sounds.
Next door to Midway’s yoga room there’s a new room set aside for mothers who’d like some privacy while nursing a baby.
But, since it is National Yoga Month, let’s get back to yoga.
Here’s a list of other airports that offer yoga rooms for travelers:
Chicago O’Hare International Airport -opened in December 2013. You’ll find it on the Mezzanine Level of Terminal 3 Rotunda, near the airport’s urban garden.
San Francisco International Airport has two yoga rooms.
SFO’s Yoga Room in Terminal 2 (which was the world’s first yoga room in an airport) is closed until November 4, 2014 to accommodate a construction project. The airport’s second yoga room, located in Terminal 3, Boarding Area E, remains open.
At all of these airport yoga studios, soothing ambiance – and mats – are provided.
Meanwhile, at Helsinki Airport in Finland, Finavia’s TravelLab initiative has been testing out a variety of yoga offerings, including a Yoga Gate, yoga lessons and the sale of yoga-related items, including mats and clothes.
The summertime project also surveyed passengers about the whether or not they’d be interested in paying for taking a yoga lesson at the airport. Would you?
Now there’s yet another cool amenity at that airport: an art cinema.
For the next six month’s the airport’s art gallery at gate 37 will be hosting an Art Cinema and showing the work of Finnish media artists.
First up: films about the Finnish people’s relationship with nature.
“Enter the red interior of ArtCinema. Take a seat and allow media art to steer your mind to another world. Return with a refreshed mind, and enjoy your flight,” said Art Cinema Anna Forsman in a statement.
And a new exhibit about Amelia Earhart is opening in Seattle on October 12 at the Museum of Flight.
“In Search of Amelia Earhart,” features a 1935 Lockheed Electra airliner that is the same type of plane as Amelia Earhart’s and one of only two in existence. This one has the same modifications as those made to Earhart’s plane and this one was flown around the world in 1997 on the 60th anniversary of Earhart’s global flight attempt.
The Museum’s Lockheed Electra passes Seattle on its final flight, Sept. 21, 2013. Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/The Museum of Flight.
The museum’s “Amelia” exhibit tells Earhart’s story through original photographs, newspapers, newsreel footage and Earhart’s personal belongings including her pilot’s helmet and goggles, and the only known surviving piece of the Lockheed Electra Earhart flew on her ill-fated flight around the world in 1937.
Not in that exhibit: Earhart’s iconic leather flight jacket which is in storage at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. More about that here.
