AirSpaceMag.com

(Poster: movieposterdb.com)

We swear we were doing work-related research when we came across this quote from Daniel L. Rust’s 2009 book Flying Across America: The Airline Passenger Experience:

“The first Hollywood movie showcasing airline travel, Three Guys Named Mike, was released in 1951 and starred Jane Wyman as a plucky American Airlines stewardess who became the object of affection of three men, all named Mike (Watch the full movie at Internet Archive). Directed by Charles Walters, the lighthearted film chronicled a stewardess’s training and provided a glimpse into the not-so-glamorous world of airline employment…. [A] young writer named Sidney Sheldon wrote the screenplay. As one of the most successful novelists of the twentieth century, Sheldon would eventually sell more than 300 million books worldwide, besides creating successful television shows such as I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart.

(Poster: moviegoods.com)

Three years after the release of Three Guys Named Mike, John Wayne starred with an impressive cast in the granddaddy of airline disaster movies entitled The High and the Mighty. Based on Ernest K. Gann’s book of the same name, the film set the genre standard for decades to come. A generation of people watched spellbound as John Wayne defied the odds in successfully bringing a crippled airliner in to land at San Francisco after experiencing in-flight problems en route from Honolulu. The theme song, which won an Academy Award, was so closely associated with John Wayne that it was played at his funeral.”

Photo by joo0ey

After your holiday visit, by the time your relatives have dropped you off at the airport, you may be so full of home cooking that your usual comfort food joints near Gate 35 don’t look that good. If you’re in Detroit, airport vendors have made it easier than anywhere to shun the cheeseburgers and gloppy pastry rolls.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine just released a list of airports with the most healthful food options. The group keeps an eye on 15 of the nation’s busiest airports and ranks them by percentage of restaurants with at least one low-fat, high-fiber, cholesterol-free vegetarian entrée (nothing assures you the  holidays are over quite like chowing down on a plate of lettuce with dressing on the side). Detroit’s Metropolitan Wayne County Airport topped that list for the third year in a row, with all 59 establishments offering at least one healthy option.

Just the existence of the list might be serving everyone’s healthy interests: When PCRM first compiled the list in 2001, Detroit ranked dead last, with only 33 percent of its vendors offering healthy options. And the 15 busy airports have all improved — which may, of course, just be the sign of the times, but a little shaming can’t hurt.

Other than Detroit, where every stop will have an option (and possibly just one, so we hope you’re not too picky), we don’t know exactly where those options exist in each airport, just the percentage you’ll hit one at your first stop. Shouldn’t dragging your luggage around looking for a darn place to eat get points in the healthy column, too? Well, you might just consult Eater’s handy Airport Dining Guide, compiled earlier this month, and hope that “tasty” and “healthy” cross-reference a few times.

(Photo: rwh)

As expected, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg tossed out a lawsuit filed by North American airlines that would have asked for a waiver on “cap-and-trade” carbon emissions taxes that will be imposed on all aircraft operating to and from Europe’s airports. Numerous other nations, including China and India, supported the suit.

The European Union claims it was forced to act because a U.N. agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization, has not imposed restrictions on carbon emissions. Aircraft account for an estimated three percent of global carbon emissions, and engine makers have accounted for an average one percent per year in improved fuel efficiency. Not enough for Europe, though. The EU is perhaps the most aggressive of any community of nations in taxing carbon emissions in an attempt to mitigate global warming. The problem is that the tax does not apply in European airspace alone, but is calculated on an aircraft’s total emission from its point of departure. That means a flight from JFK International to Paris gets a bill for every mile flown between those two points, and for the entire return flight. The lawsuit argued that by extending the reach of the tax beyond its own borders and into the airspace of other nations, the EU violates basic laws of national sovereignty and aviation treaties.

The new tax takes effect on January 1, 2012. Expect airfares to Europe to go up.

Instead of the comforting red YOU ARE HERE dot that lost customers wearily seek out while wandering the halls of shopping malls and airports, soon they’ll just have to look to their palm for a little blue dot. Yesterday, Google released an update to their oh-so-useful Maps application, adding in interior maps of the gigantor buildings we find ourselves lost in so frequently. Now if you get turned around looking for Gate B34 during your frantic 4.5 minute layover, you can fire up the app and locate not just the gate but yourself, allowing you to sprint left at the Cinnabon and jump aboard — or, alternatively, realize there are three terminals between you and your flight, save yourself the heartache and wrecked knees, and go directly to an agent to change your flight.

The interior maps label stores and geographical features, identify your position to within a few meters (continuously updating as you walk) and, perhaps most impressive, change the floor plan automatically as you change floor levels.

The roll-out of the update is modest so far. It’s only for Android right now (v. 6.0), and only includes a handful of airports (ATL, ORD, SFO) and stores (Mall of America, IKEA, Macy’s, etc). The only way to know if an interior layout is available, aside from the few listed on Google’s blog, is to search the app and look for detail. (We looked for airports near the A&S office, but DCA, BWI and IAD aren’t available yet.) Businesses can go directly to Google and upload their floor plans to the app.

The kind of real-time location information that Google offers with Maps is possibly one of the best arguments for owning a smartphone, and this addition of interior floor plans just seals the deal. Especially when you get that Five Guys craving 10 minutes before boarding.

Advertising poster for KLM Royal Dutch Air Lines, circa 1938, showing a cross-section of a Fokker-assembled Douglas DC-2. Courtesy NASM.

It’s hard to imagine now, but in the 1930s, during the days of luxury air travel, some airlines provided complimentary in-flight cigarettes. Some 40 years later, smokers would become the “new official pariahs,” groused the New Republic, while pointing out that smokers were already “segregated at the back of the plane, where they can cough and wheeze and die slowly among their own kind.”

But smoking was also banned in the early days of air travel. “Carriers had forbidden smoking aboard the earliest airliners,” writes Daniel L. Rust, assistant director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, in his book Flying Across America: The Airline Passenger Experience. Early aircraft—made from wood, canvas, and dope—were highly flammable. It wasn’t until the advent of metal aircraft and enclosed cabins that the rules changed. “Airlines preferred smokers to light up in the forward section of enclosed cabin airliners such as Ford Tri-Motors,” writes Rust. “When windows in the rear and front areas of the cabin were open slightly, cabin air moved from back to front, pulling cigarette smoke from the cabin’s anterior into the airplane’s slipstream outside.”

Interior of the smoking lounge of a Dornier Do X flying boat, circa 1930. Courtesy NASM.

Cigarettes burned more slowly at high altitudes, and smoking passengers complained that their cigarettes tasted different. There were other considerations as well: “As in-flight smoking became more popular,” says Rust, “the practice of tossing lit cigarettes out of aircraft windows became troublesome. The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared that smoldering cigarettes…dropped from aircraft posed a significant threat to America’s wilderness areas.”

Complimentary cigars were given to passengers by United Air Lines on its popular men-only service, called the New York Executive, says Rust: “A printed list of house rules advised passengers to relax, kick off their shoes, slip off their suit coats and ties, take out their pipes and complimentary cigars, and enjoy the ride in an environment free of female passengers.”

By the 1950s, smoking on airliners began to fall out of favor. One reason was an increase in food service (some passengers felt their extravagant meals were compromised by cigarette smoke). And physicians began warning their patients of the dangers of smoking in flight. In 1969, consumer advocate Ralph Nader filed a petition with the Transportation Department demanding a complete ban on smoking, and bills were quickly introduced in Congress calling for smoking and non-smoking sections aboard U.S. airliners.

In 1971, United Air Lines—one of the first airlines to offer complimentary cigarettes to its passengers in the 1930s—began to segregate cabins into smoking and non-smoking sections.

In 1996, the federal government banned smoking on all flights to and from the United States.