Please tune in Tuesday to part 2 of my ‘appearance’ on the Dallas Love Field podcast, Love Field Stories. We’ll be chatting about the great art collection at the airport and learning the stories behind some of the pieces.
Episode 17 of #LoveFieldStories premieres Tuesday on our Facebook & YouTube pages at 12:30 pm! This month’s episode is Part 2 of @hbaskas & Bruce Bleakley’s conversation. If you missed Pt. 1 last month, you’ll definitely want to listen at the link below.https://t.co/E4cG08NopPpic.twitter.com/CwpVahaA8Q
— Dallas Love Field Airport (@DallasLoveField) May 9, 2022
Airport traditions are back: Flowers on Mother’s Day
Since 2009 (except for a pandemic pause) Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) has been handling out carnations to moms traveling through the airport on Mother’s Day. We’re glad to see the tradition continued this year.
Happy Mother's Day! For the moms traveling through the airport today (10 am – 2 pm), there might be a special treat for you in the central courtyard 😉 🍪 #MothersDay2022pic.twitter.com/iH2RGoiIwi
At Midway, we're proud to support our military. For the entire month of May, active service members and veterans will receive 20% off retail and 10% off food and beverage purchases. *Some restrictions apply. pic.twitter.com/dq8VYl1zeN
We hope your day is filled with flights of fancy. And, of course, chocolate and flowers.
Sadly, this is the first Valentine’s Day in 10 years that Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) won’t have its ambassadors out in the terminal giving carnations to traveling lovebirds.
“Our ambassador program is currently suspended but we hope to get them back soon. There is hope for Mother’s Day,” says airport spokesman Bryan Long.
And this year concerns about COVID-19 meant there was no marriage license pop-up desk at McCarran International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas.
The culprit? COVID-19.
But many airports did celebrate Valentine’s Day in their own way.
Even during a pandemic, airports are places for ❤️. For #ValentinesDay, we’re remembering past hugs, proposals and happy reunions. Be kind, celebrate safely, and we can’t wait for more of these loving scenes at PIT. pic.twitter.com/kG5Szo692f
Airports across the country will be marking Mother’s Day with complimentary flowers, music and more.
Today between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. in the post-security Great Hall at Los Angeles International Airport, the Mother’s Day celebration will include a photo booth, complimentary wooden roses, and appearances by some of the pups from the Pets Unstressing Passengers (PUPs) program.
And, as they have for many years, this weekend volunteers at Florida’s Jacksonville International Airport will likely be handing out flowers to arriving moms and those waiting for their moms.
We’ll add more Mother’s Day activities as they roll in.
Delta Air Lines
rolling out free in-flight WiFI
Starting May 13, Delta Air Lines is kicking off a
much-welcome two-week pilot program to offer free in-flight Wi-Fi in all cabins
on 55 short, media and long-haul flights.
The carrier says this is the first step towards offering complimentary
Wi-Fi for everyone, all the time.
“Customers are accustomed to having access to free Wi-Fi during nearly every other aspect of their journey, and Delta believes it should be free when flying, too,” said Ekrem Dimbiloglu, Director of Onboard Product in a statement. “Testing will be key to getting this highly complex program right – this takes a lot more creativity, investment and planning to bring to life than a simple flip of a switch.”
The free
Wi-Fi service won’t support content streaming, but will let passengers browse,
email, shop, message, and engage with social media for free.
Delta’s Wi-Fi for purchase
and free mobile messaging will remain available throughout the test.
As they have since 2009, on Mother’s Day volunteers at Jacksonville International Airport handed out 1000 carnations to arriving passengers and greeters waiting for their loved ones – especially moms – to arrive.
Here are few more snaps shared by the airport.
Waiting for other airports to share snaps of the special treats they offered moms as well.
In Florida, Jacksonville International Airport has a new exhibit featuring the area’s aviation milestones and memorabilia from an era when Florida was sparsely populated.
The exhibit starts its story with January 28, 1878, when a hot air balloon containing one man was sighted floating a “mile high” over the city at 5:00 p.m. and ends on the eve of World War II, when the military created bases bigger than most Florida cities.
In addition to a wall mural noting historical highlights and photos of significant events in Jacksonville’s aviation history, seven cases display a variety of aviation artifacts. There are also interactive monitors with additional information about the area’s aviation history.
“Jacksonville Takes Flight: North Florida aviation history from 1878 to 1941” is located next to the center courtyard food court, where there’s also a great window for viewing modern day airfield activity.
Airport officials say this is just Phase 1 of the gallery exhibit. Phase II will begin its story at the end of World War II and conclude with aviation milestones leading up to the present day. Look for that to be completed in 2018, when JAX celebrates its 50th anniversary.
The 2010 Jacksonville Jazz Festival takes place Friday, May 28, through Sunday, May 30, in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. With Patti Labelle, Tito Puente Jr., the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Buckwheat Zydeco on the line-up, it looks like it will be a fine event.
But today, May 24th, before the official festival even gets started, the Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) will be kicking off its own jazz festival with live music and visual art displays in the center courtyard of the airport. The airport’s jazz festival continues through Sunday, May 30 with a line-up that includes local acts such as Class Act, PM Experience, Robbie Eccles, Aaron Bing, The Mike Bernos Band and Roger Glover, the “River City Music Man.”
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.”
The airport has teamed up with the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens to provide tree clippings and shrubbery, called browse, [word of the day!] for the zoo’s animals.
Turns out that the airport grounds are an ideal source of the natural vegetation eaten by mammals such as giraffe, elephant, okapi and great apes. The airport was having a hard time finding enough local ‘browse’ for its hungry critters, and the airport had plenty to spare.
Now, airport officials say, visitors to the giraffe and elephant exhibits, especially, will get to see the animals eating the browse collected that morning from airport property.
Valentine’s Day pops up on a Sunday this year, and that gives everyone a full weekend to celebrate the holiday.
This year, even airports are getting in on the action.
Today, Friday, Feb 12th, the Food and Shops at New York’s LaGuardia Airport will be handing out free chocolate kisses in the Central Terminal between 11 am and 4 pm. All the shops are gussied up for the holiday as well, with plenty of grab ‘n’ go treats for your sweetie.
(Photo courtesy Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Int’l Airport)
On Sunday, volunteers at Florida’s Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) will be handing out about 1,000 red carnations (they do that on Mother’s Day as well)
And Singapore’s Changi Airport is celebrating the holiday with a bouquet’s worth of giant, Valentine’s Day decorations scattered throughout the terminals.
