Airports and the enigma of departure

Now there are blogs on what to do at airports. What I thought would be details on how to spend your time at airports actually turned out to be good stuff about unknown aspects of some of the world's biggest airports.
Few of us would have known that Atlanta international airport exhibits Martin Luther King memorabilia like the transistor radio he took to all meetings and rallies to keep track of news, his spectacles, the suit he wore to meet President Lyndon Johnson and all that.
This blog is quite well organised and even reminds us about February 7, 1964, the day when the Beatles landed at JFK airport in New York - to appear two days later on the Ed Sullivan show - and how their story took a new turn after that. Here is the entry of that event: "On February 7, 1964, Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow lands at New York's Kennedy Airport - and 'Beatlemania' arrives. It was the first visit to the United States by the Beatles, a British rock- and- roll quartet that had scored its first No.1 U.S. hit six days earlier with 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.'
At Kennedy, the "Fab Four"- dressed in mod suits and sporting their trademark pudding bowl haircuts - were greeted by 3,000 screaming fans who caused a near riot when the boys stepped off their plane onto American soil." Airports have for long been seen as symbols of aspiration and departure. These days it is no longer so. Just departing won't do. You have to depart in style. From the time airports stopped being lounges and became minitownships departures have taken on new meanings.
14/02/09 Binod K John/Mail Today/India Today

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Categories: Airports Feb 2009