MetaFilter posts tagged with airports

Born with the birth of flight

Your Time Machine Sucks — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:12:10 -0800

With the grounds it was built on having hosted the first demonstration of airplane flight in 1909, Tempelhof International Airport, the world's second-oldest working commercial airport, was officially opened in 1923. Also known as City Airport, it takes its official name from the Tempelhof neighborhood of Berlin, itself named for the Knights Templar who owned its land in the Middle Ages. The Nazi era saw a redesign by architect Ernst Sagebiel at the request of Albert Speer, widely hailed as one of the classic airport designs of the 20th century despite the darkness of its origins. In the postwar era, Tempelhof was the delivery site for the Berlin Airlift, when the Western allies kept West Berlin supplied with the necessities of life for 15 months via nonstop plane deliveries from the so-called Rosinenbomber or "Raisin Bombers", despite the Soviet blockade. There have been very few logistical feats to rival the Airlift since: at the height of the deliveries, flights were arriving every 3 minutes, around the clock, with an average of 8,000 tons of goods being flown in daily. The operation succeeded, but at the cost of 101 British, American and German lives. After the blockade was lifted, this sacrifice for West Berlin's survival was commemorated with the Luftbrückendenkmal, or Berlin Airlift Monument, which remains one of the few remaining loci of the extraordinary postwar relationship between the US and the former West Germany. Nothing lasts forever. One of the big side-effects of the reunification of Berlin was that the city, formerly two cities, had multiples of everything: central train stations, operas, and a veritable embarrassment of airports. Plans were made for the BBI, a huge new consolidated airport to be placed just outside of the city in former-East Brandenburg, and these plans were made contingent on the closing of Tempelhof. Former-West Berliners were shocked, and although American Ronald Lauder has twice offered to save Tempelhof by investing a half a billion Euros to turn it into an air-accessible health (or possibly beauty) center, he has been rebuffed both times. Things took on an air of inevitability: much like the decommissioning of Charlottenburg's Zoo train station in 2006, another West neighborhood was going to lose one of its anchors as the price of progress. Oder? This winter, in a city of 3.4 million, over 175,000 Berliners signed a petition demanding a public binding refendum on whether to close Tempelhof, invoking a new procedural rule for allowing direct voting on a city policy for the first time ever. Soon, the fate of the airport will be decided: if 610,000 Berliners vote to keep it... ...well, that part isn't clear yet. Klaus Wowereit, Berlin's slightly-starstruck SPD mayor, has said that he will ignore the results of the vote and proceed with the closing plan. The conservative CDU party has made hay of this, accusing the Mayor of being anti-democratic. Even chancellor Angela Merkel has gotten into the local tussle, encouraging Berliners to get out and vote to keep Tempelhof, and referencing the Berlin Airlift in her entreaty. Did I mention that Ms. Merkel grew up in East Germany? Despite its intention to ignore the results, the SPD has decide to hedge their bets by making use of the Ron Lauder offers to invoke a little bit of class warfare [pdf], with a construction worker saying "Ick zahl doch nicht für'n VIP-Flughafen!" ("I'm not paying for a VIP airport!" in a Berlin accent) on their thousands of posters. But however the vote goes this Sunday, Wowereit's stance may have set the stage for something otherwise-unimaginable: Berlin having a conservative local government in its future. Tempelhof is the rare working airport which still manages to evoke the golden age of air travel, and I recommended that any former flight lover who has lost their faith in an age rife with humiliations make a pilgrimage to its graceful halls and rediscover their wonder. But don't wait too long to visit or you may miss your chance.

public assets and infrastructure go private--and we pay

amberglow — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:49:13 -0800

Roads To Riches (or We've Got a Bridge in Brooklyn to Sell You--Seriously) -- Why investors are clamoring to take over America's highways, bridges, and airports—and why the public should be nervous.--...a slew of Wall Street firms—Goldman, Morgan Stanley, the Carlyle Group, Citigroup, and many others—is piling into infrastructure ... Assets sold now could change hands many times over the next 50 years, with each new buyer feeling increasing pressure to make the deal work financially. It's hardly a stretch to imagine service suffering in such a scenario; already, the record in the U.S. has been spotty. ...

Power outlets in airports wiki

allkindsoftime — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 00:25:19 -0800

AirPower Wiki looks like its just getting off the ground, but if you travel much, you know the hassle of finding a power outlet in an airport. Hopefully it grows fast and furiously.

Fly in the Fast Lane

digaman — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 09:24:00 -0800

Tired of standing in line at the airport? Worried that you might share a name with a known terrorist or subversive on the TSA's mysterious no-fly lists? Relax. Get fingerprinted and/or iris scanned. And pay $79.95 a year to become a Registered Traveler, and fly Clear in the fast lane. (And note how quickly conceptual art projects become indistinguishable from reality.) Meanwhile, the Feds settle an ACLU lawsuit over the no-fly lists... while revealing no information about them. [Lists recently discussed here].

Backscatter Technology at Airports

Gordon Smith — Tue, 24 May 2005 13:50:44 -0800

"It shows nipples. It shows the clear outline of genitals." Fact: airport security is not effective against a determined terrorist. Response: "backscatter" imaging. Your trip through security will look like this. The security personnel will see something like this. It's safe! It's effective! Except for fat terrorists ("a weapon or explosives pack could be tucked into flabby body folds that won't be penetrated by the scanner") and people with guns in their body cavities.

Que pensaient-ils?

Vidiot — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 23:00:32 -0800

French police on Sunday ended their practice of hiding plastic explosives in air passengers' luggage to train bomb-sniffing dogs after one such bag got lost, possibly ending up on a flight out of Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.

WTF were they thinking? Isn't there a better way to train the dogs without making innocent people unwittingly carry plastique?

Biometric airport security

liam — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 13:30:39 -0800

Buying biometrically into big brother? Privium is an IBM-backed pay service at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport that allows passengers to identify themselves by iris recognition and thus speed their way through security checks. This being the privacy-respecting Netherlands, the biometric information is not stored in a central database, but only on a card you carry with you; other countries may not be so enlightened. This could well become a standard form of identification. In the meantime, could the failure to buy this service qualify someone as a security or insurance risk?

Are We Safer Yet?

fenriq — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 16:09:39 -0800

Air Marshal Forgets Gun in Airport Bathroom
Are we safer yet?

Minneapolis Airport Security Official Threatened Screeners

busbyism — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 13:44:04 -0800

"If you don't do as I tell you, I'll personally take you out in the woods and shoot you." A top federal security official at the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport angrily threatened to "shoot" baggage screeners and financially ruin their families if they did not do their jobs to his satisfaction, airport employees have told the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general.

All jokes about bombs, guns and killing will be taken seriously?

At least it wasn't a nail clipper...

FormlessOne — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:32:52 -0800

A woman gets a stun gun and a knife past security at LaGuardia and actually alerts authorities after she discovers them in her purse. Anybody feel safer yet? Anybody?