All Stories

Do you have what it takes to fly the friendly skies? Becoming a commercial pilot takes time, training, and dedication.

The Museum will have a brand new opportunity to tell the story of air transportation thanks, in part, to a gift from eight major airlines. 

Airports are transitional spaces, serving the Earth and the sky, a zone where both humans and technology are intertwined. Since 2007, Athenian-born photographer Alexandros Lambrovassilis has been photographing the transition occurring at Ellinikon International Airport, the international airport in Athens, Greece that closed in 2001.

The use of aircraft in smuggling was not simply a niche application, but a booming business through Prohibition and beyond, and one of the first drivers of aerial regulations.

Airports. How much have you thought about airports? The anthropologist Marc Augé describes airports as “non-places” where travelers, despite location, encounter the same stores, chain restaurants, and security procedures. Museum Curator Jennifer Van Vleck disagrees. To her, despite their anonymous character, there is no other public place in which so many emotions are openly displayed—the joy of a great adventure, the sadness of saying farewell, or even the anxiety of moving.  

There are many ways to find information about the collections held by the National Air and Space Museum Archives. There are finding aids with box and folder listings for over 100 collections.  We are providing access to more and more of our scrapbooks  and photographs.  And while we archivists would like to believe that we know everything about everything in the National Air and Space Museum collections, the truth is, with over 17,000 cubic feet of documents, we are frequently discovering, or, should we say, rediscovering items in our collections.  The stories behind some of these finds are fascinating!

December 17 marks the date of the first flight of Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903. As part of the 46^th anniversary festivities in 1949, the Air Force Association (AFA) arranged for Colonel Thomas Lanphier to fly around the world on American commercial airlines, demonstrating the efficiency of American airlines and emphasizing the rapid growth of aviation technology in the years since the first flight at Kitty Hawk.

Olive Ann Beech is proof that some milestones in aviation occur with two feet firmly planted on the ground. Olive Ann co-founded Beech Aircraft Corporation with husband Walter Beech and became the first female executive of an aircraft company when she took the reins in 1940. In Famous Personalities of Flight Cookbook, Olive Ann shared a recipe for supper nachos and a little insight into her early years in the aircraft industry.

On March 16, 1922, the staff of Aeromarine Airways in Miami, Florida, held an impromptu ice cream party. 

Sixty-two years ago today, the monumental Boeing 367-80, commonly called the Dash 80, made its first flight, revolutionizing commercial air travel.