Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Visions of Futuristic Air Travel (And Plenty of Leg Room!) in 1946

March 12, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
airtravel

  Before the American airline industry had really taken off, there were many predictions about what pent-up consumer demand following WWII would mean. The September 1946 issue of Popular Science imagined what air travel might look like just five years into the future. The cover proclaimed that "Air Travel for Everybody" was just over the horizon! From Popular Science: By 1951, air transports and the airline pattern itself, both domestic and intercontinental, will confound the most extravagant predictions of the men who were nursing a few scrawny air lines to maturity in 1931. The ... Read More

More like this: Time Machine
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Airport to Nowhere: Spain’s Costly No-Fly Zone

February 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Six hundred thousand dollars is a lot to spend for eight ferrets. Administrators at Spain’s Castellón Airport announced the establishment of the ferret contract late last year. The job had been awarded to an animal handler, to control birds and rabbits that might endanger aircraft. The contract will pay the ferret wrangler 450,000 euros, or a little over $600,000. The money buys the weasels, plus a team of falcons, that will work six hours a day. The contract was to start as soon as planes start landing at the airport, which its operators predicted, at the time, would happen this April. ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Magazine Feature Story, March-April 2012
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Will Nigeria’s ‘Airport City’ Dreams Take Flight?

February 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

In Nigeria, an Islamic sect called Boko Haram — a name that roughly translates into “Western education is a sin” — is waging war against Christians in the country’s Muslim north, resulting in the deaths of hundreds. The group has stated that it intends to target hotels and restaurants frequented by foreigners for its attacks. In the country’s south, Christian militants continue to fight against the government and foreign oil companies. And kidnappings of Western businesspeople are common. Yet Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa and has many untapped reserves. Its ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, March-April 2012
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Prop Planes: The Future of Eco-Friendly Aviation?

February 9, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Glenn Research Center

Since the days of Kitty Hawk, propeller-driven engines have been at aviation’s forefront — even today’s jet-powered turboprops are arguably mere extensions of this century-old technology. Now NASA and companies such as General Electric and Rolls-Royce are developing a new generation of fuel-efficient “open rotor” engines that are definitely not your granddaddy’s propeller. The goal is to introduce these new engines into a regional jet market with the promise of boosting airlines’ struggling bottom lines while meeting future international fuel-efficiency ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Spain’s Vacant Airport Typifies European Woes

November 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Spaniards headed to the polls Sunday, worried about their crisis-wracked economy — Europe’s fourth-largest — and performed a ‘Berlusconi’ (or a Papandreou) on their socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, replacing him with center-rightist Mariano Rajoy. But are Europe’s deepening problems the result of honest mistakes — or a lax attitude toward corruption? In one Spanish town, the line between a bad governor and good criminal has proven hard to draw. Our Marc Herman reports from the scene. A half million dollars is a lot to spend for eight ferrets. So when the ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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US, EU in Dogfight Over Airline Emissions

October 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

With the rest of the world's leaders repeatedly gridlocked in crafting a binding international climate change strategy, Europe has plowed ahead in tackling greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union designed its own emissions trading scheme, and starting Jan. 1, 2012, the piece targeting emissions from air travel is scheduled to go into effect. The Aviation Directive would slowly cap emissions on all flights landing and taking off from airports inside the EU. However, the system focuses not just on the emissions that occur within European air space, but on those associated with the entire ... Read More

More like this: Environment, The Idea Lobby
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Continental’s Charitable Donations May Be In Departure Lounge

May 11, 2010 • By • 2 Comments

A recent Nick Anderson cartoon in the Houston Chronicle highlights the city’s concerns about the proposed United-Continental merger, which would relocate Continental’s headquarters to Chicago. Houston, which has been the airline’s home since 1982, fears the merger means a loss of jobs, prestige — and charitable contributions. Research outlined in a previous Miller-McCune.com article suggests this concern is well founded. Corporate headquarters do increase charitable donations in a city, not necessarily because the corporations themselves donate more, but because they employ and ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, By The Way ...
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Peak Oil and the Return of the Jet Set

May 6, 2010 • By • 11 Comments
Peak Bunker Oil

Sitting atop the queue in my inbox is an e-mail from a travel company advertising a $736 roundtrip flight from Los Angeles to Auckland. Captain Cook discovered New Zealand in 1769; for the next 200 years the idea of visiting it, for an American, would have been alien to all but a few very wealthy individuals. Things change. As I write this, a ticket to travel 6,500 miles — one-quarter of the circumference of the Earth — is only a few clicks away. But how permanent is that change? In the last decade, studies have consistently demonstrated that the world’s storehouses of oil are drying ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Science, Science & Environment
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Are Some Airlines Just Too Dangerous to Fly?

September 21, 2009 • By • 11 Comments

In the first days after it fell into the Indian Ocean in late June, Yemenia Airways Flight 626 appeared to be a typical example of slack practices by airlines operated from Africa and the Middle East. The flight started in Paris on a newer plane but switched to a 19-year-old Airbus A310-324 for the second leg of its journey from Sana'a, Yemen, to Moroni in the Comoros Islands, which the pilot approached in high winds. Out of 153 crew members and passengers only one survived, a teenager named Bahia Bakari, who floated until her rescue by clinging to debris. European officials talked of ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Dialing in the Friendly Skies

April 3, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment

Soon, the size or snoring habits of the passengers next to you might not be your prime annoyance on those long, cramped flights — instead, you could be overhearing their cell phone conversations. Last week, the United Kingdom's telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, announced rather quietly that it had approved a plan to allow passengers on British-registered aircraft to use their cell phones during flights. It's not a done deal: Ofcom is forwarding its proposal to the British and European aviation regulators for their approval. But Ofcom has been drafting the plan since last year in ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
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