Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year and plans to keep the party going all year long with in-terminal events, music, entertainment, community partnerships, artwork, and other activities. As part of the anniversary kick-off, the Port of Seattle is sharing photos from the airport’s history. Here are a few of our favorites.
United Airlines plane landing at the dedication ceremony for the new administration building at Sea-Tac.
We gathered up some of the factoids airports, the FAA, NASA, and others shared for National Trivia Day, January 4.
Test your knowledge. Learn some factoids. And let us know what we missed.
Happy national trivia day! Did you know that the IND solar field is one of the largest on any airport property? It can power 3,675 average American homes per year. 🔌 🏠 #NationalTriviaDay
— NASA's Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) January 4, 2023
Happy #NationalTriviaDay! Get ready to test your air travel & aviation knowledge. What was the busiest travel holiday in 2022? Learn more at https://t.co/lx48YcBln4.
Last one! Who was the first female American aviator? Interested in learning more? Read about the pioneers of aviation at https://t.co/p4rN6kbluv. #NationalTriviaDay
The two-parter delves into the unique history of the airport and highlights some of the wonderful art that can be spotted in and around the terminal.
The episodes will be live-streamed on Tuesday, April 12, and on May 10 at 12:30 p.m. (Central) on Love Field’s Facebook and YouTube and will include images of many of the historical events and artwork we discuss.
To produce the podcast, DAL teamed me up with Bruce Bleakley, who is an aviation historian and co-author of The Love Evolution: A Centennial Celebration of Love Field Airport and Its Art.
We called it a conversation. But really, it’s me getting to pick the brain of the airport’s historian. I asked Bleakley about how, in 1958, Dallas Love Field’s new terminal building came to have the first moving walkway at any airport in the world. And why there was an ice-skating rink in the terminal. And about the role that Dallas Love Filed played on that day in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president on the DAL tarmac.
In this two-part podcast, we also learn the stories behind some of the great art that passengers walk over and walk by at DAL.
And I get Bleakley to tell us which city’s name is spelled wrong in the airport’s first commissioned piece of art. A detail he didn’t even share in his book.
I hope you’ll tune in!
Courtesy Frontiers of Flight Museum, Dallas
Ep. 16 of #LoveFieldStories premieres Tuesday on our Facebook/YouTube pages at 12:30 p.m. featuring author and blogger of Stuck At The Airport, @hbaskas, and aviation consultant/the man who literally wrote the book on Love Field history, Bruce Bleakley. https://t.co/E4cG08vNyhpic.twitter.com/EoOyk4AOqd
— Dallas Love Field Airport (@DallasLoveField) April 10, 2022
And we’re always glad to learn more about airport history over on the AirportHistory.org site.
The team there recently posted their top five illustrated airport history stories from 2021, starting with #5: a photo feature celebrating Vancouver International Airport on its 90th anniversary. You can see that feature here.
And #2 on their list is a roundup of the world’s 10 busiest airports at the dawn of the Jet Age in 1961. See that story here.
And we are not surprised to see that their #1 story for 2021 is a piece featuring some great photos celebrating the 40th anniversary of Singapore’s Changi Airport, one of our favorites. See that story here.
Fifty-nine years later, the airport unveiled its History Museum, detailing decades of serving the community.
The 350 square foot History Museum is near the Escape Lounge in GSP’s Grand Hall and is accessible to departing and arriving passengers 24 hours a day.
The museum gives visitors a detailed look at GSP from the founders’ vision in the 1940s through the present day and on to future plans. Exhibits include photos, videos, and first-hand accounts of the airport’s impact on the region. A special section is dedicated to the Flatwood Peaches baseball team that played on fields where the airport is located.
Airport Employees Share Their Art at FLL
In Florida, Broward County’s Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) is hosting the sixth installment of its employee artwork exhibition titled I Bet You Didn’t Know. This year, the exhibit showcases 46 artworks by 28 FLL employees and is on view through March 17, 2022, in the walkway connecting Terminals 3 and 4.
The work includes paintings, drawings, collages and acrylic pours, by artists whose airport jobs include security personnel, vendor operators, flight attendants, and other professions.
Next time you’re served a cup of water on Alaska Airlines, you’ll notice it being poured out of a box, not a plastic bottle into a paper, not a plastic cup.
This week Alaska Airlines did a great thing for the environment by swapping out single-use plastic water bottles and plastic cups for Boxed Water Is Better brand cartons and recyclable paper cups in the main cabin on all its flights.
The carrier made the switch in the First Class cabin a while back, so now Alaska is laying claim to the title of the first in the industry to move completely away from plastic for its water service.
That’s a big deal because this will eliminate about 32 million plastic water bottles and 22 million plastics cups per year from Alaska flights. The 1.8 million pounds of single use plastics per year avoided is equivalent to 18 Boeing 737s. You can read more about the program and the Boxed Water is Better Brand company in the story we wrote for The Points Guy.