I’m tickled to be one of Lufthansa’s guests for a ride on the Airbus A380 airplane traveling from Frankfurt Airport to San Francisco International Airport on May 10th, the first day the giant airplane begins regular service to SFO.
I’ll have lots of photos and details to share after my 10-hour ride, which comes after many hours spent touring Frankfurt Airport.
Among my stops today was the airport’s Lost and Found department, where Mr. Wallrodt (pictured below) was kind enough to take a moment away from his task of trying to find the rightful owner of this backpack.
Wallrodt told me that the airport’s Lost and Found department receives about 80,000 lost items a year, and an average of 300 lost laptops each month. Many of the items do end up being returned to their owners, but every three months the airport holds an auction to get rid of unclaimed items.
The strangest item Wollrodt remembers being turned into his office? A parrot that didn’t say too much and was quickly reunited with its owner.
It’s Souvenir Sunday here at StuckatTheAirport.com – a day to look at fun, inexpensive and, ideally, offbeat souvenirs from airports.
This week’s souvenir isn’t something you can take home from the airport, but something you might be able to put on an airplane: your face.
As part of KLM’s Facebook-based “Tile and Inspire” campaign, you have until May 25, 2011 to upload your portrait and a short message onto a themed, traditional Delft Blue tile. The airline will then choose about 4,000 of the tiles and apply them to the body of a KLM Boeing 777-200 that will begin flying in June.
Ready to tile yourself? You can create a personal Delft Blue Tile on KLM’s Facebook page or at www.tileyourself.com. The airline is inviting inspirational messages in Chinese, Dutch, English, German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, French and Spanish.
If you’re in Los Angeles anytime soon, make your way over to the Autry National Center to see Skydreamers, a truly wonderful exhibition of photographs from the collection of Stephen White that documents the history of flight. I put together a History of Flight slide show with some of the images from the show for msnbc.com; here’s a short preview.
As in this 1871 photo of a balloon ascending over Ferndale, CA, some of the earliest attempts to conquer space were in free floating hot-air balloons. Next came heavier than air machines and, ultimately, rocket ships that can elude gravity and soar into space. Lucky for us photographers and artists were often on hand to document and imagine these journeys.
In his now classic aviation book, Birdflight as the basis for aviation, published in 1889, Otto Lilienthal outlined his theories on flying based on his study of bird wing structure and the aerodynamics of bird flight. He built and famously experimented with a series of 18 bird-inspired gliders and served as an inspiration for Wright Brothers, who studied his gliding techniques.
Stunt pilot Art Smith became well known for aerobatic flying and for using flares to do skywriting at night, a talent he exhibited on the closing night of San Francisco’s Pan Pacific International Exposition in 1915. Smith later went on to work for the US post office as one the first air mail pilots.
Famed aviator Charles Lindbergh stands in front of his airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, shortly after completing the first solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in May, 1927. The plane is now in Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.
In 1934, the Griffith Park Observatory was getting ready to open in Los Angeles. This photograph shows the artist, Roger Haywood, sculpting a section of an exact replica of the moon, reduced to 38 feet.
I’ll post more photos from the Skydreamers exhibition tomorrow, but if you want to start planning a trip to Los Angeles to see the full show, you have until September 4, 2011 to see it at the Autry National Center.
But just last month, to make way for the relocation of that checkpoint, the plane was lowered to the floor, removed from the airport and put in storage at Missouri’s Mount Vernon Municipal Airport.
According to the owner of the company that moved the plane, “Had it still been inside the St. Louis airport when the tornado blew through last Friday, the plane would have taken a direct hit.”
Lucky, right?
That’s what the folks at the Missouri Historical Society are probably thinking. The organization received the plane from Lindbergh back in 1940 and planned to have it restored and put on display at the Mount Vernon Airport while renovations were underway at Lambert.
The timeline for restoring and returning the plane to Lambert airport may be altered a bit by the aftermath of the tornado, but at least the plane is safe and still around.
We’ll be getting more details today, but Friday night, April 22nd, an apparent tornado ripped through the St. Louis area and caused so much damage at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport that the airport is now closed indefinitely while they figure out what to do.
Here’s a story from the local TV news station KMOV:
Airport spokespeople say at least four people were transported to area hospitals with minor injuries and that:
“At this time, it appears that Terminal 1 and Concourse C suffered the most damage from the storm with high winds that blew out up to 50 percent of windows and caused roof damage as well. There is also considerable storm damage at the entrances of the airport and along roadways.”
KMOV has also posted a gallery of photos showing what the area looked like after the tornado:
The damage is heartbreaking. Especially for those who have been looking forward to all the new features and amenities that were being put in place for a major restoration project.
Let’s hope the Lindbergh 1934 Monocoupe D-145 is safe. Charles Lindbergh’s personal plane hovered over the STL Concourse C checkpoint for 30 years and just last month was lowered and moved to the Mt. Vernon Municipal Airport to make way for a concourse relocation project. The plane is owned by the Missouri History Museum and is scheduled to return to STL when renovations there are complete.
