MetaFilter posts tagged with airports

Grass Roots. Blue Sky.

netbros — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:40:11 -0800

Stories that Fly is a citizen media project that features a growing collection of digital stories about general aviation. The stories are contributed by student journalists, aviators, and interested community members and cover regional airports, events, and people in the Ohio aviation community.

Room 747

Rumple — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 22:32:52 -0800

A narrated slideshow tour of Stockholm's Jumbo Hostel, which is inside a remodelled Boeing 747. The engine pods will be each become a room for two. Opens January 15th.

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?

20-year old college student calls the TSA and tells them security is below-par. Then he proves it.

skallas — Fri, 17 Oct 2003 20:30:52 -0800

20-year old college student calls the TSA and tells them security is below-par. Then he proves it. Taking the hacker's ethic of "exposing weakness for the greater good, law be damned" this guy did just that by planting knives and other objects with little notes admonishing the TSA. Feeling safe yet? The TSA thinks we should be.

Sleeping in Airports

brownpau — Mon, 22 Sep 2003 15:19:16 -0800

The Budget Traveller's Guide To Sleeping In Airports. Overnight flight delayed far from home? Can't afford a room at one of those boring, noisy airport hotels? Stuck in Japan on a cancelled layover and too chicken to rent out a capsule? Well, why not try sleeping in the airport? The B.T.G.T.S.I.A. has tips for "pro" airport sleepers, best and worst airports to sleep in, and as an added bonus, stories of strange non-airport sleeping places.

Will this technology fly?

orange swan — Thu, 26 Jun 2003 12:29:24 -0800

Would you prefer this to being patted down? A scanner the government is testing for airport screening reveals much more than meets the eye to be comfortable for most passengers. The agency hopes to modify the machines with an electronic fig leaf - programming that fuzzes out sensitive body parts or distorts the body so it does not appear so, well, graphic.

Su — Sat, 06 Jul 2002 03:44:24 -0800

The Official History of net.art, Volume I: History of Art for Airports appropriates the style of universal informational graphics to represent subjects ranging from St. Sebastien and the Pieta, to the Star Trek transporter effect and the international sign for cannibalism you might have seen on a t-shirt.

fotzepolitic — Fri, 31 May 2002 09:48:20 -0800

Questioning the myth of plastic knives and boxcutters. "This fictoid serves to divert public attentions from the responsibility, and legal liability, of the government and airlines to prevent major weapons — such as guns, bombs, chemical sprays and hunting knives [all of which were mentioned in flight attendant and passenger cell phone calls] from being carried aboard airplanes. If such illegal devices had been smuggled aboard the planes, the liability could amount to billions of dollars. If, on the other hand, it could be disseminated that the hijackers had only used plastic knives, such as those provided by the airlines for meals, or box cutters, which were allowed on planes, neither the airlines, the screeners at the airport, or the FAA, which regulates the safety of airports, could be held legally responsible."

nobody_knose — Mon, 11 Mar 2002 10:11:27 -0800

No Profiling, No Saftey? ...to placate special interest groups that fear profiling will result in widespread racial or religious discrimination, authorities are imposing screening quotas that are unlikely to thwart a future terrorist attack. They should be doing the very opposite by creating more sophisticated profiling systems that catch real criminals. Is it really "damned if they do, damned if they don't" or is there a better way?

readymade — Mon, 31 Dec 2001 18:07:08 -0800

The town of Gander in Newfoundland, Canada is a town of 10,000 where 6600 airline passengers were diverted after the attacks of September. While hearing a radio story about it on NPR, I was moved to flubbery tears by the outpouring of camaraderie and cooperation by the townspeople and passengers. Happy New Year, Canadians, and everyone else too, after quite a tumultuous year.

Ufez Jones — Mon, 31 Dec 2001 09:48:46 -0800

No high school diploma or GED required for new aiport security screeners. The author of the bill, Senator Kay Bailey-Hutchison of Texas, "said Sunday she would prefer airport security screeners have at least a high school education, but it is a "judgment call." The DOT requirements page requires a h.s. diploma, ged, or "one year of any type of work experience that demonstrates the applicant's ability to perform the work of the position." In a rush to overhaul the system, are we setting our standards too low?

yevge — Wed, 12 Dec 2001 18:42:14 -0800

New travel package minimizes the amount of time it takes for you to get from the airport to the beach. Now you can get off the plane, and start swimming and sunbathing in no time! Isn't this amazing?

vraxoin — Mon, 05 Nov 2001 09:01:40 -0800

How, exactly, did this happen? I'll tell you how. I happened to be at O' Hare yesterday, and the security drones there were about as dumb as a bag of wet mice (more in comments).

Ty Webb — Tue, 30 Oct 2001 08:18:06 -0800

Surprise! National Review thinks the market can provide for better airport security. Talk about ignoring evidence...

xochi — Wed, 10 Oct 2001 10:02:53 -0800

Debate over brain scans Over at the Register, one of their writers has gotten into a fantastic pissing contest with InfoSeek's founder over the issue of brain scans and airport security. What are your thoughts?

scotty — Thu, 04 Oct 2001 11:18:58 -0800

Washington National shuts out Air Canada - and there am I thinking didn't George Bush recently call us "family"?