Explore the ways air travel is important in your life, even if you don't fly.

You might be surprised by how everyday things in your life are affected by the existence of airplanes!

On Demand Activities

Jump to Activity:   Story Time Suggestions   Craft Activity    Eye Spy Activities   Parachute Airdrop Design Challenge   Innovator Spotlight

Airplanes help you travel from on place to the next. 

Before air travel, people traveled by foot, horse, boat, train and car to get from one place to another. This took a long time and limited how far people could go.

When air travel began in the 1900s, it was very expensive, dangerous and also exclusive to wealthy people. Now, air travel is safer, more comfortable and accessible to more people. 

Have you ever travelled by airplane to visit family, friends or to explore a new place?

Story Time Suggestions

Check these books out at your school or library to explore stories about families traveling by air!

Going on a Plane by Anne Civardi, illustrated by Stephen Cartwright

Everything Goes: In the Air by Brian Biggs

Jet Plane: How It Works by David Macauley

Craft Activity: Make a Luggage Tag

When you’re going on a trip on an airplane, you want to make sure you don’t lose your belongings at a busy airport or on an airplane with a lot of other travelers.

Luggage tags help us mark our luggage and have important information available quickly in case it does get lost!

Here are some examples of luggage and baggage tags from our museum collections.

This vintage luggage tag shows to what location the airline is taking passengers.

This baggage label was attached to luggage by Braniff Airways for a flight from Oklahoma City to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 19, 1936. 

This baggage label from around 1937 shows the shadow of a Sikorsky S-42B Clipper airplane passing over the outline of the Bermuda Islands.  

Now it’s your turn to make your own luggage tag!

Materials Needed:

  • Paper, cardboard or 3x5 index card   
  • Pencil     
  • Markers or crayons    
  • Ruler or straight edge
  • Scissors
  • Shipping tape
  • Yarn or string

     

A scissor, tape, markers, yarn, paper, markers and other supplies.
A hand holds scissors that are cutting into a piece of paper.

Step 1: If using paper or cardboard, cut it to about 2 inches x 4 inches. This will give you the general shape of your luggage tag. If you’re using a 3x5 index card, cut it in half. 

You can also choose to make a larger luggage tag, if you'd like!

Step 2: Place a dot in the corner of your tag. This is where you’ll punch a hole later for your luggage tag attachment.

Step 3: Make three lines for the tag information. Fill in your name on the first line, home address on the second line and phone number or email address on the third line. 

A piece of paper cut into a rectangle with three horizontal parallel lines on it.
A child's hand draws a plane on a rectangular piece of paper.

Step 4: Now it’s time to decorate your luggage tag! Use whatever art materials you want to use to personalize your luggage tag. 

Step 5: Have a grown up punch a hole with scissors or a pencil where you placed a dot earlier. 

A craft activity in process for Soar Together. Hands hold a small implement up to a rectangular sheet with lines on it.
Hands smooth tape over a child's decorated luggage tag.

Step 6: To make the luggage tag last longer, cover your tag with shipping tape to make the paper or cardboard stronger and water resistant. Punch a hole through the tape where you made the hole earlier. 

Step 7: Create your luggage tag attachment by measuring out a piece of yarn or string to about 12 inches.

Step 8: Place one end of the string through the hole in your tag, pull it through and then tie the two ends together, creating a loop.

A homemade luggage tag with a drawn on airplane.
A pair of hands affix a homemade luggage tag to a bag.

Step 9: Now you’re ready to attach your luggage tag to your suitcase! Push the tag through the loop of string and then pull to tighten the string around your handle or zipper pull. 

Luggage tags get beat up and fall off during travel - that’s normal! Follow the steps above again to make more luggage tags!

Airplanes Can Deliver Things Quickly

The picture shows a cargo airplane being loaded through a door in its nose cone. 

Instead of carrying passengers, cargo aircraft are used to deliver goods and materials quickly.  Cargo aircraft are used for commercial or military purposes, or to help people in need.

Activity: Eye-Spy in your Neighborhood and in your Home

Use the Eye Spy sheets below to discover how air travel affects things in your home and neighborhood!

Click the image below to view the sheet. 

A worksheet showing things you can spy and how their travel was relatd.e Examples include: Fresh fruit. We can eat different fruits all year long even if they are "out of season" because they can be shipped by airplane from the places they are grown.; Medicine: Air travel allows medicines to quickly get to the people who need them.; Houseplant: Many of the houseplants people have in their homes came from tropical locations. Air travel allows them to be shipped quickly and safely.
An activity that encourages you to find things in your neighborhood that are related to air travel. Examples include: A friend or neighbor: Ask them if they've ever flown on an airplane. Where did they go? Air travel helps people go long distances quickly; Delivery van: Some things ordered online get delivered overnight or in 2 days because of air travel. Delivery vans transport packages to their final destinations.; Dogs: Airplanes allow live animals to be transported quickly and safely.
Airplanes Help People in Need

There is a rich history of airplanes being used to deliver food, medicines, clothing and other necessary items to people in need to places that are hard to reach. Below are two examples.

During the Berlin Airlift in 1948 - 1949, American and British forces flew around-the-clock for 18 months, bringing coal, food, medicine, and all of the other necessities of life to the two million inhabitants of war-ravaged West Berlin.  

2.3 million tons of supplies were delivered - all by airplane!

A row of military planes.

U.S. Air Force Douglas C-47 airplanes unloading cargo at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin, Germany.

After hurricanes and other natural disasters, relief and aid in the form of food, medicine and other supplies are brought to those in need via airplane. 

Sometimes, supplies are dropped from the sky because there are no safe places to land! These are called air drops.

A plane with cargo being loaded into the bay.

"UK aid cargo for hurricane-hit Haiti" by DFID - UK Department for International Development is licensed under CC BY 2.0. 

Design Challenge

Test out different homemade parachutes to figure out which one could be used to make a successful air drop. 

Your goal is to create a parachute that allows supplies to land slowly and softly onto the ground so the cargo is not damaged and the people on the ground don't get hurt.

An infographic that shows a process of design, to build, to test. The text next to the graphic reads: Follow the Design Process for this activity. Every inventor, engineer, and designer goes through these steps when trying to create a solution to a problem.

Materials Needed:

  • Parachute material. Some examples are:
    • plastic trash bags
    • grocery bags
    • coffee filters
    • printer paper
    • paper napkin or paper towel
  • String or sewing thread or dental floss
  • What you'll be delivering for the airdrop - it can be a pen or a small toy
  • Tape
  • Scissors
  • Note paper
  • Pencil
  • Stopwatch

Step 1: Design

  • Why are parachutes dropped from airplanes carrying precious supplies? A parachute catches air and creates drag, which slows down the descent of the supplies from the airplane to the ground. This allows the supplies to land softly.
  • Take a look at these examples of parachutes used during airdrops. What do you notice about them? What shape is the parachute?

A Joint Base Charleston C-17 Globemaster III aircraft delivers pallets of water and food to Mirebalais, Haiti, Jan. 21, 2010, after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit the region Jan. 12, 2010. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. James Harper Jr.)

Airdrop Delivers Rice to Orphanage in Timor-Leste During Operation Pacific Angel (#PACOM is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Servicemembers retrieve cargo dropped from a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III near Forward Operating Base Todd, Baghdis Province, Afghanistan, Jan. 6, 2011. ("110106-F-8733W-051" by ResoluteSupportMedia is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)
  • For testing out your parachute design, choose what you want your test "payload" to be. The payload during airdrops is the box full of food or medical supplies or water that is delivered. What do you want to use to represent this? You can use a pencil or a small plastic toy - anything with a little bit of weight to it.
  • Based on what you see in the pictures, and your choice of payload, how do you want to design your parachute? Sketch out your design or make a list of what you want your parachute to look like.

     

A diagraph of a parachute. The parachute part is labelled the canopy, followed by the string, holding the load.

Step 2: Build

  • Use the diagram of the parachute as a guide for building your parachute.
    • Tip: Don't worry if you don't get it the way you envision it on your first try. Engineers constantly try and try again when designing things.
  • First, cut out your canopy from your material of choice.
  • Next, cut four pieces of string and use tape to attach it to four parts of your canopy. Make sure to spread out where you are placing your string.
  • Finally, bring the other ends of the four pieces of string together and tape them to the payload.

Step 3: Test

  • Create your testing area by finding a high place where you can drop your parachute safely, or by creating height by using a step stool. Make sure you have a grown up with you if you are using a step stool.
  • Drop your parachute and use a stopwatch to track how long for the parachute to hit the ground. 
  • Hint: A successful airdrop will take time to land on the ground, so you want your parachute to catch more air and move slowly to the ground.
  • Make observations: What happened when you dropped your parachute? Did your parachute move slow enough or did it land too fast?

Step 4: Redesign

  • Based on what happened during your first parachute drop, what changes would you want to make to your design?
  • Try out a redesign of your parachute. What will happen if you make your parachute bigger? Do you want to try a different shape? Do the strings need to be shorter?
Innovator Spotlight Geraldyn "Jerrie" Cobb
  • Jerrie Cobb, who was born in 1931, became a pilot when she was 16. 
  • She was a skilled pilot who was part of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLAT).  In 1960, she was the first woman to pass all three phases of testing that astronauts undergo to prepare them for space. 
  • After NASA decided to restrict the astronaut training to only men, Jerrie bought a used Aero Commander 500B, Juliet, and began making trips to the Amazon Basin as a solo pilot delivering food, medicine, and other aid to the indigenous people.
  • She continued humanitarian aid work for over 50 years.
  • Cobb received many awards including the 1972 Harmon International Trophy as the woman pilot of the year and the Amelia Earhart Gold Medal of Achievement.  She passed away in 2019.
  • For Grownups - Learn more about this remarkable aviator.