Aviation history

Wild photo: American Airlines plane lifted over highway

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Take a good look at this photo of the MD-80 jet that American Airlines recently donated to the George T. Baker Aviation School in Miami.  The school is just across the highway from Miami International Airport, but they couldn’t just fly the plane over. So the airline partnered with the Odebrecht construction and engineering company to move the 39-ton plane from the airport to the aviation school. They used a 500-ton crane equipped with a 400-foot telescoping boom.

The photo was sent to me by Miami International Airport and was taken by Joe Pries whose website is filled with really great aviation photos.

Tidbits for travelers at MIA and PHL

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This would be fun to watch:  American Airlines is donating a 140-passenger MD-80 aircraft to the George T. Baker Aviation School in Miami. To get the plane to the school they going to lift the 39-ton plane from a ramp at Miami International Airport up over a road using a 500-ton crane equipped with a 400-foot telescoping boom.   The “big lift” is going to take place today – Monday, May 17th – and involves closing roadways and runways, removing light poles, trees and fencing and building a temporary gravel road.

Airport officials have promised to send photos; so stay tuned.

And, over the weekend, a branch of Legal Sea Foods opened at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) in the B/C Connector.

On the menu at this full-service, sit-down restaurant: lobster, crab cakes, New England clam chowder, shrimp, salmon and a variety of sandwiches, salads and desserts.

Airports and airlines recycle some surprising stuff

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For my At the Airport column in USATODAY.com this month I offered a fun round-up of items being recycled by airports and airlines in an effort to be help save the earth and, in some cases, to save some serious money.

You can read the full column, For airports and airlines, creative recyling  brings cost savings, on the USA TODAY website but  briefly, the list I included ranges from airports that recycle, reuse or re-purpose everything from old metal detectors, used de-icing fluid and concrete from old runways to creative partnerships between airports or airlines and local non-profits and green businesses. 

Two examples:

Jacksonville International Airport is working with the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens on a project to turn tree clippings into food. The zoo needs a reliable year-round source of fresh “browse,” the natural vegetation eaten by many of the zoo’s large mammals. The grounds around the airport are full of browse-worthy trees and shrubs that could do with some regular clipping.  So browse harvested at the airport in the morning now becomes dinner for giraffe, elephants and great apes at the zoo;

And old seat covers from Delta and re-branded Northwest airplanes that could have ended up in a landfill somewhere were instead donated to Tierra Ideas, a small North Carolina company that is recycling the bags as messenger bags, laptop cases and other travel accessories with patterns that will very familiar to frequent fliers on those airlines.

A Delta spokesperson says so far Delta has donated about 5,873 pounds of fabric from an estimated 20,000 seat covers. “…Enough fabric to cover 92 of Delta’s 767-300ER aircraft.”

And – here’s something that didn’t fit in the column: On May 17th, Purdue University Airport, in West Lafayette, IN will be recyling this 737 aircraft.

“Shredding it,” is the term Betty Stansbury of Purdue University uses:

The aircraft is a 41 year old Boeing 737-200 donated to the University by United Airlines fifteen years ago for research and training purposes in Purdue’s  Aviation Technology Program. 

“The plane has reached the end of its useful life, and will be shredded starting on Monday May 17th. ….We use a large cutting device, called a shearer, to chew the plane into smaller pieces, which are placed in metal containers for transportation, melting and recycling.”

Grimms’ Fairy Tales at Dane County Regional Airport

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A National Geographic website about Grimms’ Fairy Tales offers these words of advice:

“Looking for a sweet, soothing tale to waft you toward dreamland?  Look somewhere else.”


That’s because the stories Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected in the early 1800’s don’t always have happy endings. There are witches. There are wolves. And there are creatures and plot turns kids (and some adults) shouldn’t read about before bedtime.

But if you’re wide awake and passing through the Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wisconsin, you’ll definitely want to spend time perusing the books, prints, engravings, and historical documents in the airport’s new exhibition:  Once upon a time … – The Brothers Grimm – Life and Work, on view through June 25, 2010.

And when you’re in the terminal, don’t forget to look up: a full-size Corben Super Ace airplane – like the ones built in Madison in the 1930’s – is suspended from the ceiling. Volunteers from the Madison chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association built this plane using original 1930s plans.

Bonus features on Oakland Int’l Airport website

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Poke around on some airport websites and you’ll find some fun, surprising and educational stuff.

Case in point: the Oakland International Airport (OAK) site, which has a link to the Exploratorium’s instructions on how to fold a paper airplane, information about the Oakland Aviation Museum, which sits on the airport’s North Field,

and a great historical video about the history of the airport and its connections to Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and other aviation pioneers.

You can watch the entire 20-minute video, or see bite-size segments of the film on the OAK website.

Souvenir Sunday: Amelia Earhart luggage

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Earlier this week, while waiting for Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger’s presentation at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, I spent some time in the Amelia Earhart exhibit.  And while I don’t think I’ll take up flying my own plane anytime soon, I keep thinking about getting some new luggage.

Amelia Earhart endorsed a long list of products ranging from cars, cigarettes and clothing to what one press release described as nothing less than “the first truly practical and genuine airplane luggage.”

Earhart may have disappeared in 1937, but it appears a line of luggage bearing her name was produced well into the 1990’s.   And while I haven’t come upon anything from that line in the thrift stores near me, I did poke around the Museum of Flight gift shop to see if I could find something under $10 and “Amelia” for today’s Souvenir Sunday feature.

The only items that fit the bill were a few young adults books, including this one from the National Geographic Children’s Books series that includes photos, quotes from Earhart’s writings, theories about how she vanished, and maps of the route she followed on her last flight.

Oregon Curiosities: The Bomber in Milwaukie, OR

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I love hanging around airports, of course, but I also find bliss when let loose in small museums filled with odd and unusual artifacts or if there’s a wacky roadside distraction somewhere and I’ve got the keys to the car.

So I’m fortunate to be able to produce radio features and write books about my discoveries. More than two hundred of my favorite offbeat attractions in Oregon are in the newly updated Oregon Curiosities book you see pictured in the craftily-titled Buy My Books section here on this site. There are an equal number of unusual people, places and things in the Washington Curiosities book I’m starting to update right now.

One of the aviation-related places in the Oregon Curiosities book is The Bomber Restaurant complex in Milwaukie, about six miles south of Portland.

The Bomber Gas Station

From 1947 until 1991 this vintage World War II B-17G four-engine bomber served as shelter for a forty-pump independent gas station that was one of the top performers in the country. When the gas station closed, the bomber fell on hard times and for years the plane was just a sad-looking roadside attraction suffering from bird poop, vandalism, and Oregon’s rainy climate.

Now restoration of the bomber is under way. Her nose is all shiny and new and on display inside the on-site WWII-themed Wings of Freedom Showcase. And while the gas station is long gone, you can fill up your stomach at the memorabilia-packed Bomber Restaurant, where the menu includes Bomblettes (omelettes) and Bombarded Hash Browns for breakfast, and Tokyo Rose BLTs and Bomberburgers for lunch and dinner.

If you want to see The Bomber for yourself, be sure to enter the Oregon Mt. Hood Territory’s Secret Sweet Spots contest. Each week you’ll be asked to answer a (very easy) question about a “hidden gem” in the region. You’ll find the answers in the short videos on the Mt. Hood Territory website.

Of course, one of those Secret Sweet Spots is The Bomber.

Capt. Sullenberger and Amelia Earhart at the Museum of Flight

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Monday evening I was fortunate to be in the audience at Seattle’s Museum of Flight for a  presentation by the recently retired Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the now-legendary pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 who was able to successfully land a plane in New York City’s Hudson River.

He began the evening by showing the NTSB’s animated version of the US Airways 1549 flight path (below) and then went on to talk a bit about his family, his upbringing, his training as a pilot, the importance of preparation and teamwork, and his philosophy of work and life. After he was done, some of the kids in the audience got to ask a few questions as did some of the aviation geeks from our high-tech community.

(Here’s a link to a more detailed report on the evening by SeattlePI.com aerospace reporter Aubrey Cohen)

Before Captain Sullenberger’s speech, I spent some time in the Amelia Earhart exhibit, which will be at the museum until May, 2010. In addition to photo panels and film clips telling Ms. Earhart’s life story, there’s a section showing some of the products she endorsed to help pay the bills, including Amelia Earhart luggage and Lucky Strike cigarettes.

All in all, quite an inspiring evening.

AeroTrain running at IAD; Mobile lounges still on duty

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Last week the Dulles International Airport (IAD) started using its AeroTrain airport train system to replace some, but not all of the mobile lounges that have been taking passengers between the Main Terminal and the Midfield Concourses for years.

I really like those kooky lounges. Riding on them always offers a unique view of the airport.  And there’s a black and white picture somewhere in the airport’s archives that explains the “lounge” part perfectly: it shows females attendants serving drinks to passengers on their way to the plane.

Even this photo shows travelers who seem to have no worries at all about making their connecting flights.

There are certainly some upsides to the AeroTrain.

One benefit is that right now there’s a photography exhibit in the tunnel connecting the temporary Concourse C with the C-Gates AeroTrain station.

(Photo by: Kanji Takeno)

The exhibit “Washington, DC: Through Our Eyes,” includes photos shot by members of the White House News Photographers Association. The 44 photos currently on display are just the first group of more than 200 photos that will be displayed on a rotating basis.

And,  if you find yourself with a long layover at Dulles International Airport (IAD) and have wrung all the excitement out of riding the AeroTrain and looking at the photo exhibit, then check out the cool stuff at the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center just down the road.

The museum is big enough for the to Smithsonian to display thousands of aviation and space artifacts that just won’t fit on the National Mall.  Like the Boeing B-29 Superfortress  “Enola Gay.”

Tidbits for travelers: YVR’s Olympic rings & Air New Zealand’s Skycouches

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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?