Airports - The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

One of the "joys" of being the mother of a baby is how drastically your sleep patterns change.  Right now, I'm dealing with a teething baby, which translates into a lot of late-night television.  So at 5:30 on Saturday morning, I'm channel surfing and come upon the 1970 movie classic "Airport," starring Burt Lancaster.  As much of a geek as I am about this industry, I had actually never seen this movie.  You can go here to see a summary of what it was about.  It was based on a book of the same title, written by Arthur Hailey.

The movie was set at the fictional Lincoln International Airport (actually portrayed by Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport) in Chicago on a snowy night.  Lancaster plays Mel Bakersfield, the airport manager.  First, they had some great footage of Boeing 707s, with the logos clearly showing.  Second, it was like a who's who of classic legacy carriers, with shout-outs to Delta, Braniff, Eastern and TWA.  They showed the classic Continental Airlines meatball logo, and how could we forget that NWA used to be Northwest Orient Airlines?   The 707 features the cockpit with a captain, first officer and a navigator.  The overhead bins had no doors and were used to hold only pillow, blankets and ladies' hats and gloves.  And check out that Concorde model in TWA colors in Bakersfield's office!

Some things were quite different back when the movie was filmed.  Helen Hayes won an Oscar for playing an elderly woman who spent her time sneaking onto aircraft as a stowaway flying around the world.  Airline security was extremely lax, to say the least.  If there were metal detectors and X-ray machines, I never saw one. 

And I had to laugh when I saw the pagers being carried by Bakersfield and Mr. Standish (played by Lloyd Nolan), who handled customs at the airport.  They were about the size of an oversized deck of playing cards and buzzed quite loudly.  Bakersfield had an actual full-sized phone in his car.  And people smoked like chimneys, even on the flight.

But the thing that really hit home for me was some of the arguments the movie portrayed between airports, airlines and the bodies that govern them.  Residents living near the airport were protesting noise from aircraft in front of the terminal, making the airport authority head quite nervous about the bad publicity, while Bakersfield argued about aircraft safety.

Bakersfield's brother, the philandering pilot Capt. Vernon Demerest (played by Dean Martin, right, shown with Jacqueline Bissett as stewardess Gwen Meighen), is Trans Global Airlines' representative at the airport and has criticized his brother-in-law's management of the airport. One of the classic solliliquies in the film was Bakersfield's appeal for more airport funding that could have been made by airport proponents before Congress last week.  And I quote, from the Internet Movie Database:

"Don't talk to me about consequences! When Congress voted to cut airport appropriations, you never even sent in a letter of protest. And where were you when the airlines and the pilots and the rest of us were... were pleading for... for more airports and better traffic control? You were picking out the colors in the ladies' lounge. So now you've got your consequences!"

As he was speaking, Bakersfield was standing in front of a model depicting what the airport would look like in the future.  He also mentions the money needed for future expansion and added capacity.  It's actually eerily close to the same arguments being made by airports today during the current battle that is FAA reauthorization.  I was half waiting for Bakersfield to cite Airports Council International-North America's capital needs survey which says that airports need $17 billion a year for infrastructure projects.

I think it's really interesting that a movie made almost 40 years ago, while dated, still has some relevant observations to make as airports continue to balance many needs, including keeping their facilities safe, secure and modern while keeping an eye on the bottom line during a time when funding is tight.