Cool airport needs cool products: Mestia, Georgie

We here at Air Wear love good design from products to architecture. We enjoyed Metropolis magazine's article on Mestia, Georgia's ski resort airport. Please find the article below. To get to Mestia, one flies into Krasnodar International Airport (airport code KRR) or Kopitnari Airport (KUT). We need to make some skis with these codes and hit the slopes.

By Michael Silverberg
Posted May 12, 2011

ARCHITECTS
J. Mayer H. / www.jmayerh.de
Mestia, Georgia

May–December romances are common enough, but who ever heard of August–December architecture? That was the unlikely life cycle of a small airport that opened on December 24 in Mestia, Georgia, an isolated ski town high in the Caucasus Mountains. Exactly four months earlier, on August 24, Jürgen Mayer H. was in Venice for the architecture biennale when he got a phone call from the Georgian goverment. The German architect, who has dedicated much of the last seven years to the Metropol Parasol—a wooden, mushroomlike complex that was finally completed this spring in Seville, Spain, after long delays—was asked to take on a building with a much shorter span. “They called and said, ‘We need an airport design tomorrow,’” he recalls. “‘Actually, yesterday, but tomorrow is OK too.”

That night, Mayer H. traded ideas with Jesko Malkolm Johnsson-Zahn, an architect in his Berlin office, sketching on paper and then sending photos of the drawings over his BlackBerry. By the next morning, they had settled on a form: a three-pronged, 3,000-square-foot folly arrayed like a chicken foot, with two slightly uplifted segments (for waiting areas and a café) on one side and a tower (for air-traffic control) on the other. The tinted-glass facade would be set between slabs of concrete, a locally favored material, making a modern-ist cake topped with a layer of white icing. The government approved, and construction began one month later.

Georgia hopes the airport will bring tourists to the mountainous region of Svaneti, whose stone towers and often impassible roads have made it a stronghold since the Middle Ages. (Those defensive towers, UNESCO World Heritage sites, helped inspire the vertical forms of the airport.) Driving from the capital, Tbilisi, takes as long as ten hours; the government-subsidized flights cut the trip to less than an hour. “Since we really want to promote this area as a touristic attraction, of course you need a good transportation possibility,” says Kate Aleksidze, the director of United Airports of Georgia. “If we would not manage to open it in December and opened it instead in June, people would be there, but we would miss the whole winter season.”

Read the rest of the article on Mestia, Georgia's ski resort airport

London-based writer Louise Driscoll reviews Air Wear. THX! (...for once, I'm not referring to an airport code)

Say it with… airport codes: Air Wear puts the destination on your travel gear
by Louis Driscoll

May 20th, 2011


They say you can tell a lot about a person by the places they choose to fly to.

New York-based brand, Air Wear is inspiring jet-setters with a favourite destination to show it, with travel gear featuring their city name of choice, its latitude and airport code.

It is like joining an “elite club”, explains Air Wear’s founder, Jason Solarek, whose brand is based around the philosophy “you are where you go”.

Solarek took his inspiration from his earlier years as a newspaper reporter where he would often travel frequently. It was a time, he says, when he wanted to “share his pride” for his hometown in Rochester (NY).

“Airport codes signal that you are in the know. People see the signal you’re sending, nod, and think, ‘so that’s where you’ve been,” he says.

Air Wear products also tap into the idea that there is a story to tell behind every airport experience or destination – whether someone would like a memento of a special holiday spot or a reminder of home.

“For the popular cities, such as LA, the palm tree shirts are cliché. We are offering a new keepsake with high novelty value,” says Solarek.

With airports becoming destinations in their own right (Singapore Changi airport is just one example with a cinema, spas, gardens and museum), it is perhaps no surprise that the mainstream crowd are choosing to make a statement by wearing their favourite airport name on a baseball cap, or slung over their shoulder.

Read full article at terminalu.com

'Aerotropolis' article from Wall St. Journal

This Wall St. Journal article by Greg Lindsay talks about the importance of airports in building cities, much like he and co-author John Kasarda did in their book Aerotropolis.
Here at MyAirportCode.com, we'll put designing a ICN airport code on our to-do list.


FEBRUARY 26, 2011
Cities of the Sky
From Dubai to Chongqing to Honduras, the Silk Road of the future is taking shape in urban developments based on airport hubs. Welcome to the world of the 'aerotropolis.'

By GREG LINDSAY

To arrive at midnight at Terminal 3 of Dubai International Airport, as I did recently, is to glimpse the pulsing, non-stop flow of the new global economy. The airport, which runs full-tilt 24/7, is packed at all hours. Nigerian traders bound for Guangzhou mix with Chinese laborers needed in Khartoum, Indian merchants headed to clinch a deal in Nairobi, and United Nations staff en route to Kabul.

Dubai's recent financial woes have forced the tiny Gulf state to scrap or scale back some of its more outlandish development schemes, including The World, an artificial archipelago shaped roughly like a world map. But one project has not flagged: the new concourse for Terminal 3. With construction continuing around the clock, the annex to what is already the world's largest building is desperately needed to accommodate the fleet of 90 Airbus A380s ordered by Emirates, Dubai's government-owned airline.

Read full article at WSJ.com - click here

Haneda, Japan (HND) airport opens 20 minutes from Tokyo

To help celebrate Japan's launching of Haneda (HND) airport, we are launching Haneda airport Air Wear travel bags, t-shirts, and more - click here.



From the Wall St. Journal

BUSINESSOCTOBER 20, 2010
Japan Offers Long-Awaited Alternative to Narita
By MARIKO SANCHANTA

TOKYO—Narita International Airport has long been the scourge of frequent fliers and business travelers because of its distance from Japan's capital, but now Tokyo is offering an alternative after decades of delay.

On Thursday, Haneda Airport—a mere 20 minutes from downtown Tokyo—is set to open its doors to scheduled international flights and increase its capacity by 40%, in a move that analysts have called the "big bang" in aviation liberalization in Japan.

Despite Japan's reputation for efficient infrastructure, the country has lagged behind its Asian peers when it comes to its main international airport, which is located among rice paddies about 90 minutes from central Tokyo.

Traditional Japanese tea lounge is seen inside the new international terminal building of Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan. The terminal is due to open on Oct. 21.

"If Narita disappeared, I wouldn't mind," said Hiromichi Shirakawa, an economist at Credit Suisse in Tokyo who travels abroad six or seven times a year. "Access to Haneda is so much easier. Think of the opportunity cost of travel time: it takes over an hour [to go to Narita], versus 15 minutes" to reach Haneda, he added.

Haneda, which had been operating just a handful of international charter flights to Asian destinations such as Beijing and Hong Kong, plans to unveil its new international terminal Thursday. The introduction of scheduled international service will be staggered from Oct. 31, and by next spring, passengers will be able to fly from Haneda to Paris, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, Singapore and Bangkok, among other destinations.

The new runway will create an additional 110,000 landing slots a year, 60,000 of which will be used for international flights. By 2013, the government aims to increase international slots to 90,000.

Japan has consistently been left off the top-10 international-airports list, which is dominated by Asian gateways. In 2010, Changi Airport in Singapore, Incheon International Airport in South Korea and Hong Kong International Airport were the top three airports in the world respectively, according to the Skytrax World Airport Awards.

Part of the impetus to expand Haneda was to raise Japan's competitiveness against its Asian peers, particularly as low-cost carriers in the region are flourishing. Because of regulations, Japan has the highest landing fees in the world: It costs 770,000 yen, or about $9,400, to land a Boeing 747-400 at Narita, compared with 70,000 yen at Heathrow Airport in London.

Members of the information desk work in the departure lobby of the new international terminal building of Haneda Airport.

The government hopes the changes at Haneda will encourage more visitors to Japan, chiefly from Asia. It signaled a shift in policy when the Democratic Party of Japan came into power last year. Narita had been the brainchild of Japanese bureaucrats when it opened in 1978, and efforts to expand Haneda had, for years, been shelved because of the political controversy it would cause.

"Haneda will mark its first step toward becoming a 24-hour international hub," said Sumio Mabuchi, Japan's transport minister, in a speech last weekend.


Read full article

Vancouver airport (YVR) featured in Metropolis magazine

We enjoyed seeing Vancouver's airport in Metropolis magazine. We like the new 'living' wall.

OCTOBER 2010 • METROPOLIS OBSERVED
Green Monster
To beautify an airport eyesore, all it takes is 27,000 plants, a high-tech maintenance system, and constant vigilance.

By Tim Newcomb
Posted October 20, 2010

DESIGNERS: Sharp & Diamond Landscape Architecture
www.sharpdiamond.com

PROJECT: Vancouver International Airport Living Wall
Vancouver, British Columbia

Flying is a fairly miserable experience even in the best conditions, and the drab, confusing, and downright ugly architecture of many airports certainly doesn’t help. Which is why Randy Sharp, the landscape master planner of Vancouver International Airport (YVR), in British Columbia, felt compelled to do something about a massive blank concrete wall confronting international travelers arriving via the city’s new light-rail system. For this 56-foot-tall, 39-foot-wide eyesore, Sharp envisioned a vertical landscape that would create “a more soothing, relaxing environment for passengers,” he says. “Airline companies want people relaxed, so this is a piece of environmental art.”

Sharp is no stranger to creating living walls. He and his firm, Sharp & Diamond Landscape Architecture, built Canada’s first one, at the Vancouver Aquarium, in 2006. But that piece spanned about 500 square feet. The YVR wall is more than four times that size—indeed, at 2,173 square feet, it is the biggest green wall in Canada and one of the largest in North America. More daunting than its sheer size, however, was the location—facing north. “Heavy shade on a north-facing location is a limiting factor for most green-wall plants,” Sharp says. “Climbing plants in the heavy shade are too thin and do not produce lush, dense foliage.” And fruiting plants were out of the question, since the airport does not want to attract birds. So Sharp, inspired by a lush canyon wall he saw on a trip to nearby Saturna Island, selected a range of hardy native species—including green and silver versions of Japanese euonymus and licorice fern—and arranged them in long curving patterns that reference the flight paths of planes.

View full article

Airport EATeries

We all know that the place to EAT is Wenatchee, WA (its 3 letter code).
;)

Best Airport Eateries
Wall Street Journal
SEPTEMBER 25, 2010
—Jackie Cooperman

Fed up with indecent cuisine and infuriating service, enterprising restaurateurs are bringing gustatory pleasure back to travel, opening airport wine bars and plying flyers with charcuterie on the run.

Vino Volo wine bars and shops, at 10 airports including Seattle-Tacoma International, Washington Dulles, Baltimore BWI and New York's JFK. AMBIENCE: The wine bars are sleek and quiet; the attached wine stores have helpful salespeople. EAT: Marcona olives roasted with rosemary; smoked salmon rolls with crabmeat; braised pork tacos with fresh cabbage slaw. DRINK: The wine flights: World Value Reds, Shades of White. vinovolo.com

Read full article - click here

The stories behind oddly named airport codes. PEE? SUX?

Rick Seaney, who runs a website named FareCompare.com, wrote an article featured on ABC News Travel about the history behind some notable airport codes. He mentions the story behind LAX, ORD, PHX, CVG, and more. It's a fun read. MyAirportCode.com offers products for many of the cool locations he mentions (sorry folks from PEE, still no Air Wear available).


The Wacky Logic Behind Airport Codes
How Do They Come Up With Airport Codes? Rick Seaney Explains

Column By RICK SEANEY
FareCompare.com CEO
Sept. 22, 2010 —

Most of you fliers out there are familiar with JFK, LAX and DFW -- the airport codes for New York's Kennedy, Los Angeles International and Dallas-Ft. Worth. But how many of you have flown to SUX?

Yes, SUX - the airport code for Sioux City, Iowa. Luckily, residents there have a sense of humor; instead of bemoaning their unfortunate appellation, they celebrate it: the airport's website sells souvenirs including t-shirts and caps emblazoned with the bold SUX logo.

It could be worse. It appears a kindergartner might have had a hand in picking some of these airport codes: Russia's Bolshoye Savino Airport is stuck with the unlovely designation PEE, while Brazil's Poco De Caldas Airport has to live with POO. Then there's Rotorua, New Zealand ROT while Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base is just plain BAD.

Ever wonder how these codes came into being and what they mean? I'm going to tell you, plus I'll give more examples of truly weird ones. Like FAT and GRR.

For more air travel news and insights visit Rick's blog at: http://farecompare.com

First things first: FAT is the airport code for Fresno, Calif. (and from what I understand, the locals aren't crazy about it); and while GRR may sound like an anger management therapy center, it's actually the code for Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Where do these codes come from?

The assignment of these codes is administered by the Montreal-based International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the codes cover locations (mainly airports) around the globe.

A lot of these codes are no brainers: LGA stands for LaGuardia in New York, HOU is for Houston's Hobby Airport and SLC is for Salt Lake City.

History of Airport Codes

But what about, say, LAX -- where did that "X" come from? It goes back to the early days of passenger air travel when airports simply used the same two letter codes that the National Weather Service used for cities, never dreaming they'd ever need more letters for more combinations. When they did, some airports simply added an "X" to their name, and that's why you have LAX or PHX for Phoenix.

Read full article - click here