We’re up, up, and away on a Delta flight from New York’s JFK Airport to Malaga AGP, Spain. In less than eight hours we’ll be on a Mediterranean beach.
My 11-year-old nephew and my partner sit beside me. The other nephew (aged 10), and his parents sit across the aisle We’re oblivious to the Atlantic Ocean below.
The “Good Old Days”
It’s often claimed flying is unpleasant, and the old days were so much better. I beg to differ.
Live organ music at 20,000 feet has been greeting passengers in a rerular-run Northwest Airlines Stratocruiser between the Twin Cities [Minneapolis and St. Paul] and Chicago and New York. Shown playing the 190-pound Lowry organ installed in the plane is Nan Bergin of Northwest Organ Co. Six professional organists have taken turns making the flight to entertain passengers. The organ was modified to fit into the airplane’s seat tracks two doors forward of the main cabin door.
I found this gem at the Northwest Airlines History Center in Bloomington, Minnesota.
Today, I’m grateful we each get a choice of personal entertainment, including no entertainment, and no-one is smoking. A tipple is always welcome. Some things don’t change.
Flying is exciting. Attitude is a choice.
Between Flights at JFK
Between flights at JFK, we explored the former TWA Flight Center, now the TWA Hotel. There was no air terminal like it when it opened in 1962. It was designed by Finnish-American architect, Eero Saarinin, who also designed the St. Louis Arch.
In the following excerpts from his book, Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Revolutionary Structure, author Alastair Gordon recalls his first impressions of the terminal when he was 12 years old. He had just had a disappointing visit to the General Motors Futurama exhibit at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. “The so-called future seemed shabby.” By contrast, the TWA Flight Center breathed the future.
I’ve interspersed the excerpts with photos I took today.
I had seen photographs of the birdlike structure, but none had done it justice. The interior was a continuously flowing surface of cast concrete. There were no sharp corners, no right angles, no dull flat ceilings. The building was topsy-turvy-in some places the walls swooped down to become floor, while other parts curved above our heads like ocean waves that were about to break yet were somehow frozen in place. Between the vaults were gaping ellipses of glass through which you might see a tail fin or a passing cloud. I was only twelve and knew nothing about architecture, but the pavilions at the world’s fair seemed stodgy in comparison. This wasn’t pretending to be the future; this was the future. Those were real Boeing 707s sitting on the tarmac.
The air was charged with anticipation. Pilots stepped through pools of milky light. Beautiful stewardesses trailed behind them wearing trim red outfits and perfectly straight stocking seams. The ambient lighting, the flirtatious smiles, the lipstick-red carpet and uniforms, the cushioned benches and steel railings curving around the mezzanine-all conspired on the senses. Even the clock that hung from the ceiling had a suggestive globular shape. We sat in an oversize conversation pit, beneath a panoramic screen of glass, and watched the service vehicles scoot between the planes. “This is unbelievably cool,” said my cousin in a hushed, almost reverential tone.
When his flight was announced, he walked up the long umbilical departure tube, turned once to wave, like an astronaut, and then disappeared into the satellite at the far end of the tube. There was an otherworldly, Twilight Zone quality to this moment as if my cousin were flying not to London but to Mars. Perhaps it was the recessed lighting or the curved walls that made for the slow-motion, spacy feeling. Perhaps it was the subtle rise of floor that made the boarding tube seem hyperextended, much longer than it actually was. All I knew was that I didn’t want to leave just then. I wanted to savor the moment.
The End of a So-Called “Golden Age”
1958 was a big year for aviation. The design of the TWA Flight Center was largely completed. Transatlantic passenger jet service started between New York Idlewild (now JFK) and London Heathrow and Paris Orly. To cap it all, Frank Sinatra released his Come Fly with Me album.
The TWA Flight Center was best suited for the world of turboprops. By 1969, with the arrival of the Boeing 747, flying became more democratized. The terminal was less and less able to handle the larger planes and the passenger volume.
When the TWA Flight Center opened in 1962, it made news worldwide. Today we barely notice China’s eight new airports every year.
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