Selling the early air age: aviation advertisements and the promotion of civil flying in Britain, 1911-1914

Transport historians are becoming increasingly attuned to the use of advertisements as a source of cultural reference. Though primarily designed to encourage the consumption of particular goods and services, advertisements also served to create, reinforce and intensify particular societal perceptions and cultural discourses surrounding the superiority (and thus desirability) of certain commodities, including different forms of transport and mobility. Through a content analysis of over 6,800 advertisements that appeared in one British weekly aeronautical newspaper, Aeroplane, between 8 June 1911 and 25 June 1914, this paper documents the changing nature of the aeronautical goods and services that were advertised during this period. It argues that, in addition to fulfilling a utilitarian commercial purpose, the advertisements served an important symbolic function. By alerting people to the availability of new aeronautical products, the advertisements provide a valuable insight into how the emerging new discipline of civilian aeronautics developed before the First World War

Air craft: producing UK airspace

Air craft: producing UK airspac

UK airspace: making space for flight

UK airspace: making space for fligh

The view from the air: the cultural geographies of flight

The view from the air: the cultural geographies of fligh

On being aeromobile: airline passengers and the affective experiences of flight

The advent of heavier-than-air powered flight and the subsequent inauguration of regular passenger air services at the beginning of the twentieth century transformed not only the practical geographies but also the affective human experiences of travelling. Aircraft enabled passengers to accomplish journeys, which would once have taken many days or weeks to complete, in a matter of hours, and transformed the sensory experiences of being mobile. However, while much has been written about the development of global commercial aviation and the metaphorical compression of time and space air travel has effected, research into the individual embodied human experiences of being aeromobile remains relatively scarce. Drawing on powerful theoretical arguments inspired by the mobilities turn within the social sciences and recent concern with the ‘affective’ dimensions of everyday life, this paper uses firsthand written historical records of passengers’ experiences of travelling by air during the 1920s and 1930s to uncover the diverse kin/aesthetic and affective experiences of flight. While recognising that such experiences are shaped, at least in part, by gender, age, nationality, race, and past experiences of air travel, passengers’ descriptions of the unique bodily (dis)comforts, fears, and anxieties associated with flying are used to illustrate how aeromobile bodies experience their airborne environment in ways which have yet to be adequately addressed. The paper concludes by calling for a more nuanced understanding of air travel that recognises that the advent of powered flight has fundamentally changed our perceptions of time, space, distance, and speed, and transformed what it means to be mobile

Securing the skies: airports and the fight against terrorism

Few people, it seems, have a good word to say about airport security. Interminable queues, brusque security staff, confusing or contradictory regulations and intrusive body searches are just some of the complaints that are often articulated. However, while airports and commercial aircraft remain targets for terrorist activity, robust security screening and the intensive surveillance of passengers, airport employees, and airline staff will remain a vital, if much maligned, part of modern air travel

Global networks before globalisation: imperial airways and the development of long-haul air routes

From its formation in 1924 to its takeover in 1940, Britain's Imperial Airways forged a network of longdistance air routes around the world that knitted the British Empire together by air for the first time and paved the way for a new age of aeromobility. While transport historians have long recognised the importance of these early services to the administration of Empire and the future development of international civil aviation, the unique spatialities of Imperial Airways' services have received scant geographical attention. By charting the expansion of Imperial's international route network in the 1920s and 1930s, this paper provides an insight into the formation and operation of a global aerial network that helped usher in a new era of globalisation

Airports: from flying fields to 21st century aerocities

Airports: from flying fields to 21st century aerocitie

Pests on a plane: airports and the fight against infectious disease

Regular flyers are all too aware that air travel can, on occasion, be bad for your health. Jetlag, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), airsickness, dehydration, ear pain, and respiratory infections are just some of the conditions that are reported. Yet while seatbased exercises, air conditioning filters, flight socks, earplugs, boiled sweets, inflatable pillows, and eyeshades may lessen some of the risks and discomfort associated with flying, the warm, pressurised, sealed cabins of passenger aircraft continue to offer the perfect environment in which certain pests and diseases may thrive and spread. Medical journals are replete with stories of airline passengers contracting a range of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, meningitis, measles, and influenza, from fellow (infected) travellers, while the rapid spread of the SARS virus to over 25 countries around the world in 2003 was attributed, in part, to the long-haul airline network. Since the birth of commercial aviation at the beginning of the twentieth century, airports have found themselves at the forefront of a worldwide battle against the spread of tropical and infectious diseases, and a range of public health interventions have been deployed to try and prevent pests and diseases being transported around the world aboard aircraft. This article reviews some of the public health directives that were devised to prevent the spread of disease by air and explains their implications for the design and operation of airports

Aeromobile elites: private business aviation and the global economy

Aeromobile elites: private business aviation and the global econom