Labor Day marks the unofficial end to summer and is one of the busiest times to travel. As you gaze out onto the tarmac at the massive Boeing 747 you're going to board, take a moment to reflect on the wonder of the man-made flying machine and how it's about to carry over 500 people [...]
Model airplanes allow children and adults to get up-close and personal with aviation without becoming a pilot or buying a plane ticket. Models made to scale can mark the beginning of a journey into aviation through its history and fascinating stories associated with real life versions of a plane. Assembling model airplanes requires patience, skill, [...]
With how popular commercial flying is today, it's hard to believe the multi-billion-dollar industry ever served anyone other than its passengers. Airplane development in World War 1 encouraged officials to consider the potential of using planes for fast commercial and mail transportation. By early 1918, Congress approved $100,000 to experiment with an air mail route. [...]
In 2016, 3.8 billion people traveled by air, and IATA expects that number to double over the course of 20 years. This isn't unreasonable, considering that the 4 billion passengers expected to fly commercially this year is double what it was just 12 years ago. Suffice it to say, commercial air travel is common these days. [...]
Some of the most popular, iconic airlines of the United States have disappeared from the skies--and from our minds. How is it that some of the most popular airlines are now defunct? For some, financial problems were to blame. For others it was labor problems, increased competition or plane crashes which doomed them. Some of the [...]
On November 8, 1957, a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser left San Francisco International Airport at 11:51 am (PST) for Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii. It was a Friday and, for many people, it was probably a rather ordinary day. Pan Am Flight 7, registration N90944, Clipper Romance of The Skies was an around-the-world flight; its first leg [...]
Airline ads really took off during the Golden Age of Aviation, but now seem to have fallen rather flat. I’m nearly a decade late to the party, but I‘ve recently started watching Mad Men, and suffice it to say I'm rather hooked. This is a spoiler-free post (in the event that I’m not the only [...]
Supersonic commercial transport existed for 30 years--what happened? The 1950s was a time of communism, capitalism, polypropylene, and polio vaccines--not to mention the maturity and growth of television sets, solar-powered wrist watches, and the beginnings of the Concorde project. By the early 1950s, Arnold Hall (director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment) asked Morien Morgan (a [...]
