Airplane travelers are dismayed by the long lines and seemingly chaotic activities that precede boarding a full airplane. Surely, the one who can solve this problem is going to make many travelers happy. This article describes the Jet Travel Challenge, an activity that challenges students to create some alternatives to this now frustrating…

Many researchers have called for educational leaders to develop a moral grounding for their work. This essay begins a discussion of how Starratt's (2005) spiraling framework of moral responsibility represents a process through which educational leaders can evolve from taking a transactional approach to problem solving, to using moral and…

The sign, "Hawler International Airport," greeted the author and her fellow passengers as their six-seater plane landed in July 2003 on a strip of concrete in the middle of an Iraqi field. Fortunately, the approach to this improvised airfield was direct, not like the spiraling in and out of Baghdad and Basra required to avoid possible…

For 10 months in 1929-30, subscribers to "The McCook (Nebraska) Daily Gazette" (a daily newspaper serving 33 towns in southwestern Nebraska and northwestern Kansas) received their newspapers via air delivery with "The Newsboy," a Curtis Robin cabin monoplane. In an age when over-the-road travel was difficult and air travel was…

La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra combines a meticulously hand-painted landscape with historic photographs in a seamless blend imprinted on the holographic-like surface of a metallic coated substrate. The mural for the Denver International Airport, entitled La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra is a breakthrough in digital murals, printed digitally on a…

This article features NASA's FlyBy Math, a series of six standards-based distance-rate-time investigations in air traffic control. Sixth-grade students--acting as pilots, air traffic controllers, and NASA scientists--conduct an experiment and then use multiple mathematical representations to analyze and solve a problem involving two planes flying…

Friedman profiles Margy Natalie, 47, who has been a certified pilot for as long as she's been teaching. She owns her own airplane--a blue 1950 Ryan Navion B, has attended space camp and lists four airports as her favorite places in the world. She is one of the two public school teachers on full-time loan at the Smithsonian National Air and Space…

The attacks of terror carried out on September 11, 2001 gave rise to waves of hate-fueled violence across the country. It has been argued that the attacks and the subsequent, current context of war have resulted in a heightened sense of American intolerance. They have led to discernable shifts in how certain minorities are perceived and treated in…

Several new books detailing various aspects of the lives and accomplishments of Wilbur and Orville Wright were written to mark the centennial of their famous 1902 entry into manned flight. This article describes eight books that are appropriate for early- to intermediate-level readers: (1) "Touching the Sky. The Flying Adventures of Wilbur and…

In 3 experiments, the authors examined the role of memory for prior instances for making relative judgments in conflict detection. Participants saw pairs of aircraft either repeatedly conflict with each other or pass safely before being tested on new aircraft pairs, which varied in similarity to the training pairs. Performance was influenced by…

Donald C. Burr, founder and CEO of PEOPLExpress, discusses the keys to the success of PEOPLExpress from the "peanuts fares" to the humanistic style of management, and the eventual demise of the airline. One area discussed is the role of information systems in business and the result of the airline's lack of an effective computerized…

Screeners at airport security checkpoints perform an important categorization task in which they search for threat items in complex x-ray images. But little is known about how the processes of categorization stand up to visual complexity. The authors filled this research gap with screening tasks in which participants searched for members of target…

Virtual flight can be very entertaining, and computer-based simulators can also be educational, if organized and used correctly. When Berea College decided to find a flight simulator suited to the school's educational goals, the faculty settled on an ANT-18 Link trainer. This article begins with a discussion of Link trainers' history, and then…

The University of Notre Dame (Indiana) fund-raising program uses first-class transportation and hospitality in major donor weekends. Features include careful research, personalized correspondence, transportation provided by trustee-owned private planes, scheduled ground transportation, accommodations, information packets, and a weekend of…

Aviation as people know it today is a mature but very young technology as time goes. Considering that the 100th anniversary of flight was celebrated just a few years ago in 2003, millions of people fly from city to city or from nation to nation and across the oceans and around the world effortlessly and economically. Additionally, they have space…