Cover photo of the limited edition, Finnair-themed Donald Duck comic book distributed November 1, 2013 Finnair long-haul flights.
Finnair turned 90 on November 1 and kicked off a year of celebrations by handing out copies of this Finnair-themed Donald Duck comic book to passengers. The airline also had Finnish graphic designer Erik Bruun design a special anniversary poster.
Looking forward to more stylish and fun anniversary items from Finnair.
In my new book, Hidden Treasures: What Museum Can’t or Won’t Show You, I’ve included (of course) a few aviation-related items.
The folks at the Daily Planet, the Air & Space Museum’s blog, took notice and this week included a story about the book and the featured items from the museum’s collection.
They started with Katharine Wright’s knickers. The ones she likely wore beneath the lovely, white lace dress she chose to wear when she accompanied her brothers, Orville and Wilbur, to the White house to receive the Aero Club of America award. The dress and the knickers and a wide variety of other items relating to the history of women and aviation are at the International Women’s Air & Space Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Daily Planet story also notes that Hidden Treasures features Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit. It was designed to withstand the trip to the moon and back, but wasn’t expected to last longer than six months on earth – so is now kept in a cold vault at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia.
Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit. Courtesy National Air & Space Museum
Other aviation-related items you may want to read about:
The metal detector that screened terrorists at the Portland, Maine, airport on the morning of September 11, 2001. That’s on display at the TSA Museum at TSA headquarters in Washington, D.C., which is only accessible to employees and invited guests.
A metal detector which screened hijackers on the morning of September 11th.
And the manual Colton Harris-Moore – the Barefoot Bandit- purchased (likely with a stolen credit card) to teach himself how to fly after stealing – and crashing – a small plane.
Here’s another link the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s blog post about the items and here’s another link to the book: Hidden Treasures: What Museums Can’t or Won’t Show You
Courtesy Buffalo Bill Center of the West
I recently had the great pleasure of spending a day touring the five first-rate museums that make up the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. Formerly the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the recently expanded center is home to the Cody Firearms Museum, The Plains Indian Museum, The Draper Natural History Museum, the Whitney Western Art Museum and, my favorite, the Buffalo Bill Museum, which tells the story of the American West through both the private life of William F. Cody and his public life as the showman who created the pageant known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.
One of the great treats during my day at the museum with a few other journalists was going on a private tour with the curator of each museum and having a chance to see the back rooms.
And – lo and behold – when we went behind the scenes at the Buffalo Bill Museum with John Rumm, senior curator of American History and the curator of the museum, he showed us a box that contained Amelia Earhart’s leather flight jacket. This is the jacket Earhart is seen wearing in a lot of photographs from the 1920s and 30s and which she likely wore on her historic flight across the Atlantic.
Light brown leather jacket owned and worn by Amelia Earhart on several of her historic flights. Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, WY, USA.
What’s that jacket doing in the collection of the Buffalo Bill Museum?
According to Rumm, Earhart and her husband, George Palmer Putnam, had bought property in Wyoming around 1934 from a friend of theirs, Carl Dunrud, and asked him to begin building a cabin on the site.
Then, in 1937, before heading out for that ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the world, Earhart began sending Dunrud some of her personal possessions for safekeeping. Included among those items was the flight jacket and a buffalo coat from the 1870s (below) given to her by the Western movie star William S. Hart.
Rumm says for many years the buffalo coat was displayed and identified as having belonged to Buffalo Bill. But when Rumm took a close look at the records, he cleared up that mistake.
Amelia Earhart and Carl Dunrud at the Double D Ranch in northwest Wyoming, ca. 1935. Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, WY, USA.
Monday, August 19, 2013 is both Orville Wright’s birthday and National Aviation Day and the place to celebrate will be the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
Wright Flyer Sculpture – Courtesy NPS
Park fees will be waived all day and there will be a full schedule of events, including a special Junior Flight Ranger Program, talks about the Wright Brothers and their accomplishments, book signings, kite flying, paper airplane building and lots of other activities.
JFK Terminal 3. Photo by Anthony Stramaglia
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has just issued its 2013 list of America’s Most Endangered Historic Places and the iconic, flying-saucer-shaped Terminal 3 at New York’s JFK International Airport – slated for demolition now that Delta Air Lines has moved over to Terminal 4 – is one of 11 sites on that list.
JFK T3 – The former Worldport – courtesy PANYNJ
Instead of demolishing Terminal 3- which opened in 1960 as the Worldport – the National Trust for Historic Preservation suggests demolishing just the south concourse instead and using the buiding as a connecting facility between T2 and T2 “as a dedicated or premier terminal or as an independent building open to the public containing a museum, restaurants, shops, aircraft observation space, airport employee daycare or other purposes.”
Here are the 10 other sites that made this year’s list. Find out more about each site here.
Abyssinian Meeting House, Portland, Maine .
Astrodome, Houston, Texas.
Chinatown House, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.
Gay Head Lighthouse, Aquinnah, Mass .
Historic Rural Schoolhouses of Montana, Statewide .
James River, James City County, Va.
Kake Cannery, Kake, Alaska .
Mountain View Black Officers’ Club, Fort Huachuca, Ariz.
San Jose Church, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico .
Village of Mariemont, Cincinnati, Ohio .
My “At the Airport” column on USAToday.com last week was all about airports and airport terminals in the United States named for aviation pioneers. You can see that story and photos from many of those airports here, on StuckatTheAirport.com.
There was, of course, not enough room to list all the U.S. airports with links to aviation history, nor to mention some notable international ones, such as the International Terminal at Auckland Airport, which is named for New Zealand aviatrix Jean Gardner Batten (1909-1982).
In the 1930s, Batten became well-known for taking a number of record-breaking solo flights across the world, including the first-ever solo flight from England to New Zealand in 1936.
Her Percival Gull airplane is on display in the terminal.
Former presidents George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton all have airports named for them. So do former cabinet secretaries John Foster Dulles and Norman Y. Mineta and celebrities as varied as John Wayne, Bob Hope, Louis Armstrong, Will Rogers and Arnold Palmer.
Denver International Airport’s main terminal is named for Elray Jeppesen. Courtesy DIA.
There’s also a long-held tradition of naming airports, airfields and terminals for people with links to aviation history. Here are a dozen to explore.
In 1928, San Diego Municipal Airport was dedicated as Lindbergh Field in honor of Charles A. Lindbergh, who took off nearby on May 10, 1927 for St. Louis, New York and then Paris for would become the first, solo, non-stop transatlantic flight.
Today, passengers at San Diego International Airport can see a life-size replica of Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis airplane hanging above baggage claim in Terminal 2 and a 26-inch-tall bronze bust depicting the aviator in his leather flight jacket. (Unfortunately, a popular 30-foot tall mural of Lindbergh – above – with a model of his famous airplane that was applied to the east wall of the Commuter Terminal in 1997 was removed in June 2012 as part of a building maintenance project.)
Lucky Lindy is also remembered at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. MSP’s Charles A. Lindbergh Terminal opened in 1962 and was renamed Terminal 1- Lindbergh in 2010. A plaque and a bust honoring Lindbergh, who grew up on a farm in Little Falls, Minn., can be found near the information booth in the ticketing lobby.
Denver International Airport’s main terminal building is named in honor of Elrey Jeppesen, an early airmail pilot whose small black notebook filled with navigational notes about mountain elevations, radio towers, landmarks and possible obstructions gave way in the mid-1930s to a company that printed and sold manuals and charts giving pilots a better way to figure out where they were.
Jeppesen, whose Denver-area navigational aid company is now computerized and owned by Boeing, got his first pilot’s license in 1928 (it was signed by Orville Wright) and was the first passenger to deplane from the first flight that arrived at the Jeppesen Terminal in 1995. An exhibit about Jeppesen, who died in 1996, is on Level 6 North of the Jeppesen Terminal and includes a copy of his first pilot’s license as well as his original airmail pilot jumpsuit, leather helmet, and goggles; a larger-than-life-size bronze sculpture of Jeppesen is on Level 5 of the terminal.
In Wisconsin, Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport (MKE) honors Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell, an accomplished, outspoken and controversial pioneer in American military aviation. Mitchell’s medals, his portrait, photos and a model of his DH-4 Osprey aircraft are on display in the Mitchell Gallery of Flight, the airport’s free, on-site museum.
Chicago’s Orchard Field (the source of the ORD airport code) was renamed Chicago-O’Hare International Airport in 1949 to honor naval aviator Lt. Cmdr. Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare, a Medal of Honor recipient from Chicago who died in World War II. An exhibit in the main hall of Terminal 2 includes a replica of O’Hare’s Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat plane and memorabilia from the era.
Dayton General Airport South, a general aviation facility in Ohio, was renamed Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY) in 1995 to honor Wilbur and Orville Wright, who worked on aviation projects in town. The brothers’ accomplishments are celebrated at an on-site hangar museum that both displays and flies Wright Model B lookalike planes, along with other historically accurate aircraft.
In Charleston, West Virginia, the Kanawha Airport was renamed Yeager Airport (CRW) in 1985 to honor flying ace and retired Brigadier General Charles “Chuck” Yeager who, in 1947 became the first pilot to travel faster than the speed of sound. Travelers will see a bronze statue of General Yeager in the terminal, his portrait in the public area, and a metal art piece titled “Sound and Beyond” on the roadway near the terminal.
The cargo-dedicated Rickenbacker International Airport (LCK) in Columbus, Ohio honors Columbus-born Eddie Rickenbacker, who was a commercial-aviation executive, race-car driver, World War I flying ace and one-time owner and operator of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Courtesy the Boeing Company
In Seattle, the King County International Airport, also known as Boeing Field, is named for Boeing Company founder William E. Boeing, while Atchison, Kansas-born aviatrix Amelia Earhart is honored at that city’s Amelia Earhart Memorial Airport. And celebrated pilot and high altitude flight equipment innovator Wiley Post – the first pilot to fly solo around the world – has an airport named for him just outside of Oklahoma City.
Not all airports tagged with names from aviation history get to keep those titles.
In Louisiana, what is now Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) was originally named Moisant Field in 1946 (and, later, Moisant International Airport) in honor of John B. Moisant.
Moisant didn’t live in New Orleans, but died in an airplane crash there on the last day of December 1910 while competing in a contest that promised $4,000 in prize money to the pilot whose plane stayed in the air the longest.
Before his demise, Moisant gained fame in 1909 for building and flying the first metal airplane and, in 1910, for taking the first airplane passenger across the English Channel. Along for the ride that day was Moisant’s regular flying companion – his cat.
(My story about airports named for aviation pioneers first appeared in my ‘At the Airport’ column on USA TODAY in a slightly different format under the title: What’s in an airport name? Sometimes it’s aviation history.”
I didn’t think the National Championship Air Races, held in Reno, Nevada each year in September, were for me, but after seeing a thrilling, giant IMAX 3D movie about the event, I’ve changed my mind.
http://youtu.be/fjM6tFYMFyI
I saw the Air Racers IMAX 3D movie at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle (along with what appeared to be a lot of dads with their 8 year old sons) but if you scroll to the bottom of the film info page, you’ll see that the film is also playing in numerous cities around the country – and around the world.
The National Air & Space Museum and the National Museum of American History have joined forces to create a new permanent exhibition at the Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C. called Time and Navigation: The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There.
Wiley Post’s Winnie Mae circled the globe two times, shattering previous records.
Photo: Eric Long, Smithsonian
The new exhibit explores how revolutions in timekeeping allowed people to find their way and includes sections about navigation at sea, in the air and in space,
Great on-line resources include a Timeline of Innovation, which notes that a new and more accurate definition of a second – the basic unit of time – was adopted in 1967.
“The new second was based on the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation in an isotope of cesium. Previously, the second had been defined as 1/86,400th of the mean solar day. The change was momentous. Atomic clocks had demonstrated that the unvarying vibrations of atoms were more accurate timekeepers than the irregular daily rotation of the Earth.”
A new second. courtesy National Air & Space Museum
More than 200 people from around the region – and around the world – recently attended Aviation Geekfest 2013 in Seattle.
Over the past few years this annual event has grown tremendously in scope and attendance and this year offered aviation fans a chance to visit the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Boeing’s Renton 737 factory and, up near Paine Field in Everett, the Future of Flight, Boeing’s Dreamliner Gallery, the Museum of Flight Restoration Center, the Historic Flight Foundation, the Flying Heritage Collection, and the Boeing Factory Tour.
David Parker Brown, the key event organizer, has a full report – and loads of photos – on his blog, Airline Reporter.com, but I wanted to share the report filed by 12 year-old Eskil Skute, who traveled from Norway with his dad, Per, just to attend the Aviation Geekfest – and check out Seattle.
Eskil and his dad at Aviation GeekFest. All the way from Norway! Courtesy Boeing
I wasn’t able to attend Aviation Geekfest this year, but did stop by for the closing session and sat down next to Eskil and his dad. They filled me in on all the activities and I told Eskil that if he ended up writing a report of his adventure, I’d be happy to include it on StuckatTheAirport.com.
Eskil sent this to me a week or so back. English is not his first language and I toyed with editing this to smooth it out, but have decided that his enthusiasm comes through just fine as is. So all I did was shorten it a bit.
Thanks, Eskil, for sharing your story!
“My trip to Seattle was totaly awesome!!! We started leaving from our town Sarpsborg and drived to Oslo airport hotel. … At 04:00 at morning we took a shuttle buss up to the airport and took the airplane from Gardermoen to schipol. Then we whaited 2 hours to the 9hours trip ahead of us. When we landed i was whery tired.we also lost our luggage:
We where a lot at the future of flight. We where a lot up on the roof and watched planes land and take off. We saw the Dreamlifter take off. That whas very cool:) next day we where going to the boeing 737 factory. We where first at the museum of flight. I loved museum of flight. The sr-71blackbird and mig 21fishbed and more…
When we comed to the boeing factory we where taked up to a Big room with three Big tv’s. We where not allowed to take pictures inside. When i comed out to where They builded boeing 737 i where like woow. It was huge. I saw a lot of airplanes in Lines ahead. I saw sas, westjet, hainan airlines,northwest airlines and united. It was hot inside.
That was the first time in history that They had lett anobody inside where They builded boeing 737.
Next day i buyed me a model aircraft. It was a boeing 737 800 star allaince. The airline was air nippon(ANA).
Then we went shopping some new clothes beacause we have lost our luggage. The next day we where going to the dreamliner gallery and the main factory for boeing. The dreamliner gallery was pretty cool. We saw things and colors They wanted to have in the plane.
Then we whent to the main factory. I just said wow when i comed in. This plase wasent huge…IT WAS LARGE. We saw the boeing 747,777,787. We saw the first boeing 787dreamliner for Norwegian. The boeing factory is the biggest building in volum in the WORLD.
I had a great time inside the boeing factory. The coolest thing was the 737 ofcourse;). Next day it was back to seatle. We went to pike plase market in seatle. They throwed fish and that was funny:). Then we went to spaceneedle. It was tall and i could see the museum of flight:). We also saw the k5news helicopter take off from the roof:) that was very cool. We saw it from spaceneedle:).
Next day was our last day in seatle. We went on the tallest skyscraper in seatle it was abaout 70-80 floors. On 40th floor the talest starbucks in the world was.
The next day we had to leave. I buyed togheter 6model aircraft and i was happy. When i comed home i was tired. I miss seatle.
