Milwaukee – General Mitchell International Airport

Museum Monday: Gallery of Flight at Milwaukee General Mitchell Int’l Airport

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If you like flying, chances are you like airplanes. And if you like airplanes, chances are you like visiting aviation museums once in a while.

Lucky for you there are more than 600 aviation and space-related museums around the country.   Each Monday, StuckatTheAirport.com visits one of them.

This week, it’s the Mitchell Gallery of Flight inside Milwaukee General Mitchell International Airport.

Hamiltion Metalplan at aviation museum inside Milwaukee Mitchell Int'l Airport

(Hamilton Metalplane display, courtesy Mitchell Gallery of Flight)

Like the airport, the museum is named in honor of General Billy Mitchell, who is regarded as the Father of the U.S. Air Force.

Mitchell is profiled in the People section of the museum, along with Wisconsin-born fighter ace Dick Bong and other aviators with Wisconsin links, including Charles Lindbergh, who visited the Milwaukee airport in 1927.  Two exhibit cases display artifacts and photos about Captain James Lovell, who is best known for his four Gemini and Apollo spaceflights.

James Lovell exhibit at MKE Gallery of Flight museum

In the Aircraft & Airships section of the museum, you’ll see antique propellers, aviation-related artifacts and loads of models, including a 22-foot, 1/36th scale model of the Graf Zeppelin II (a sister to the Hindenberg) and models of military jets, WWII aircraft and airplanes of all eras.

Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport Gallery of Flight exhibit

(Photo by Prateek Bahadur, via Flickr Creative Commons)

Best of all, the museum is located pre-security at Milwaukee General Mitchell International Airport and admission is free.

For information about hours and exhibits, see the Mitchell Gallery of Flight website.

aircraft models displayed at Gallery of Flight Museum in General Mitchell International Airport Milwaukee

(Photo by Prateek Bahadur, via Flickr Creative Commons)

Do you have a favorite aviation/space museum? Please feel free to nominate it for a future edition of Museum Monday.


Airport smackdown: it’s “gloves off” when dissing rivals

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My “At the Airport” column for USAToday.com this week – Gloves are off as airports go after their rivals in ads – is about airports rolling out funny, “in your face” campaigns.

In a video about San Francisco International Airport, Mayor Gavin Newsom has a cameo. So do Marion and Vivian Brown, the kooky 83 year-old identical twins who have become beloved San Francisco icons.  Designed to promote SFO as the connecting hub of choice for travelers coming to the United States from New Zealand or Australia, the video compares SFO’s airy, light-filled, international terminal to an unnamed airport simply referred to as “the bad airport.”

In this video, the bad airport does look pretty bad. But, marketing experts tell me, that’s what airports have to do these days to stand out.

Another example is the new campaign from Canada’s Edmonton International Airport (YEG), which serves about six million passengers a year. On March 1st the airport rolled out a “Stop the Calgary Habit” campaign, urging residents of central and northern Alberta to stop connecting through or driving to Calgary International Airport (YYC), which serves about ten million passengers a year.  Using the tag line “When you go south, so does your air service,” (Ouch!), the campaign includes short (:15) videos portraying repentant passengers.

There’s also a tool kit that includes a shake-able Magic 8-ball-like sphere offering habit-breaking tips and – my favorite – an “Emergency Hypno Cure.”

Barf bags and skywriting

For years Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport’s (MKE) was marketing itself to northern Illinois as “Chicago’s Third Airport” and back in 2005 mailed out a “Sick of O’Hare?” media kit that included (now highly collectible) air sick bags that said “Feel Better, Fly MKE” and a package of breath mints. A few years later, when the Chicago Cubs were playing the Chicago White Sox at Wrigley Field, MKE hired a skywriter to write the address of the MKE website in the airspace over the game.

Airport spokesperson Patricia Rowe says they don’t do that ‘in your face’ stuff anymore. “Now we spend more time focusing on what’s great about our airport instead of attacking O’Hare.”

Nicer, maybe. But nowhere near as much fun.

To read my USAToday.com story about airport smackdowns, please see Gloves are off as airports go after their rivals in ads.

More fun freebies at airports

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Free is good. And these days many small and mid-size airports are trying to build loyalty by offering travelers free amenities.

In my At the Airport column this month on USAToday.com, I write (again) about the free cookies they hand out at Indiana’s Fort Wayne International Airport as well as some of the fun freebies offered at other airports.

Florida’s  Jacksonville International Airport distributes free flowers to passengers each year on Valentine’s Day and on Mother’s Day.

The Reno-Tahoe International Airport offers free local phone calls year-round.

In Milwaukee, home of Harley-Davidson Motor Company and the Harley-Davidson Museum, the General Mitchell International Airport offers free parking for any traveler who arrives on a motorcycle.

At Ohio’s Port Columbus International Airport, children are given free crayons and blank post-paid postcards and asked to please mail back a picture from their travels for display in an airport gallery. The airport has also purchased its own popcorn machine and hands out free bags of popcorn during quarterly customer appreciation days. “It’s a great way for us to say thanks,” says CMH communications manager Angie Tabor, “Plus, who doesn’t love the smell of popcorn?”

And in Wisconsin, the Outagamie County Regional Airport gives out free toothbrushes.

Airport marketing manager Kim Sippola says: “We noticed that many business travelers would get off the plane, go into the bathroom, and search through their bags for a toothbrush because they were going right from the airport to a meeting. So we thought we’d reduce some stress for our customers by providing them with toothbrushes.”

The airport partnered with a local dentist and now stocks post-security bathrooms with travel-sized oral hygiene kits that contain mouthwash, dental floss and a toothbrush with a single-serving of toothpaste.

Have you found a great airport freebie? Please let us know so we can tell other travelers about it.

Souvenir Sunday at Milwaukee’s General Mitchel Int’l Airport

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Happy Souvenir Sunday!

On Sunday here at Stuck at the Airport, we take a look at some of the fun, local, inexpensive and, ideally, somewhat offbeat things for sale at airports around the country.

This week, the folks at General Mitchell International Airport (MKE)  in Milwaukee, Wisconsin sent over some suggestions:

MKE jelly belly candy

First up: Jelly Belly candy.

Sure, these treats are are  for sale in lots of places, but you have a good excuse to buy ‘em here because the Jelly Belly Center – a candy warehouse with a factory tour – is in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, about a half hour away from the airport.

No time for the tour? Check out the on-line Jelly Bean Museum of Bean Art, which is filled with big, colorful jelly bean portraits of Elvis (three versions!), James Dean, Larry King, Laurel & Hardy, George Clooney, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth II, and others. The gallery also includes this jelly bean portrait of Amelia Earhart:

MKE - Amelia Earhart Jelly Bean portrait

OK, back to Milwaukee’s Mitchell Airport and Souvenir Sunday…

Not a sweets fan? Well, cheese and beer are big in Milwaukee, so it makes sense that this Cheddar Beer Soup is for sale a the airport. The instructions seem simple enough: add water and beer!

MKE - Chedder Beer Soup

So… thinking of doing a little shopping at MKE?

Keep in mind that in addition to a used book store – a rarity at an airport – MKE has a great aviation museum on site and, befitting the city that’s home to Harley Davidson, there’s free parking for motorcycles in the airport parking garage. (Four-wheeled vehicles get a good deal too: the airport offers $5 supersaver  parking.)

Souvenir Sunday one

Have you found a great souvenir at an airport lately? If it’s under $10, “of” the city or region and, ideally a bit offbeat, snap a photo and send it along. It might show up in a future edition of Souvenir Sunday.

Free parking for motorcycles at Milwaukee’s airport

Museums,


Heading to Milwaukee this weekend for the grand opening of the 20-acre downtown Harley-Davidson Museum or planning to be there later this summer (August 28-31) for the Harley-Davidson 105th Anniversary Celebration?

Keep an eye out for the 1956 Harley-Davidson model Kh that belonged to Elvis Presley. And check out the 13-foot customized motorcycle known as the “King Kong.”

And don’t forget: there’s always free parking for motorcycles at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport.

And if you can’t make it to Milwaukee this summer – or don’t even have a motorcycle – here’s one you can cut-out and and make at home.