Politics at the Airport brings together leading scholars to examine how airports both shape and are shaped by current political, social, and economic conditions. Focusing on the ways that airports have become securitized, the essays address a wide range of practices and technologies--from architecture, biometric identification, and CCTV systems to "no-fly lists" and the privatization of border control--now being deployed to frame the social sorting of safe and potentially dangerous travelers.

John F. Kennedy International Airport is one of New York City's most successful and influential redevelopment projects. Built and defined by outsize personalities—Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, famed urban planner Robert Moses, and Port Authority Executive Director Austin Tobin among them—JFK was fantastically expensive and unprecedented in its scale. By the late 1940s, once-polluted marshlands had become home to one of the world's busiest and most advanced airfields. Almost from the start, however, environmental activists in surrounding neighborhoods and suburbs clashed with the Port Authority. These fierce battles in the long term restricted growth and, compounded by lackluster management and planning, diminished JFK's status and reputation. Yet the airport remained a key contributor to metropolitan vitality: New Yorkers bound for adventure and business still boarded planes headed to distant corners of the globe, billions of tourists and immigrants came and went, and mammoth air cargo facilities bolstered the region's commerce. In The Metropolitan Airport, Nicholas Dagen Bloom chronicles the untold story of JFK International's complicated and turbulent relationship with the New York City metropolitan region. In spite of its reputation for snarled traffic, epic delays, endless construction, and abrasive employees, the airport was a key player in shifting patterns of labor, transportation, and residence; the airport both encouraged and benefited from the dispersion of population and economic activity to the outer boroughs and suburbs. As Bloom shows, airports like JFK are vibrant parts of their cities and powerfully influence urban development. The Metropolitan Airport is an indispensable book for those who wish to understand the revolutionary impact of airports on the modern American city.

The first full cultural history of the ultimate modern structure: the airport, revealed as never before ... Since its origins in the muddy fields of flying machines, the airport has arguably become one of the defining institutions of modern life. In Naked Airport, critic Alastair Gordon ranges from global geopolitics to action movies to the daily commute, showing how airports have changed our sense of time, distance, travel, style, and even the way cities are built and business is done. Gordon introduces the people who shaped this place of sudden transportation: pilots like Charles Lindberg, architects like Eero Saarinen, politicians like Fiorello La Guardia, and Hitler, who built Berlin's Tempelhof as a showcase for Fascist power. He describes the airport's futuristic contributions, such as credit cards, in the form of fly-now-pay-later schemes, and he charts its shift in popular perception, from glamorous to infuriating. Finally, he analyzes the airport's function in war and peace—its gatekeeper role controlling immigration, its appeal to revolutionaries since the hijackings of the 1960s, and its new frontline position in the struggle against terror. Compelling and accessible, Naked Airport is an original history of a long-neglected yet central creation of modern reality and imagination.

The massive expansion of global aviation, its insatiable demand for airport capacity and its growing contribution to carbon emissions make it a critical societal problem. Alongside traditional concerns about noise and air pollution, airport politics has been connected to the problems of climate change and peak oil. Yet it is still thought to be a driver of economic growth and connectivity in an increasingly mobile world. The politics of airport expansion in the United Kingdom provides the first in-depth analysis of the protest campaigns and policymaking practices that have marked British aviation since the construction of Heathrow Airport. Grounded in documentary analysis, interviews and policy texts, it constructs and employs poststructuralist policy analysis to chart rival groups and movements seeking to shape public policy. This book will appeal to people interested in the history of aviation and airports in Britain, local campaigns and environmental protests, and the politics of climate change.

As with other transportation methods, safety issues in aircraft can result in a total loss of life. Recently, the air transport industry has come under immense scrutiny after several deaths occurred due to aircraft design and airlines that allowed improperly inspected aircraft to fly. Spacecraft too have found errors in system software that could lead to catastrophic failure. It is imperative that the aviation and aerospace industries continue to revise and refine safety protocols from the construction and design of aircraft, to secure and improve aviation systems, and to test and inspect aircraft. The Research Anthology on Reliability and Safety in Aviation Systems, Spacecraft, and Air Transport is a vital reference source that examines the latest scholarly material on the use of adaptive and assistive technologies in aviation to establish clear guidelines for the design and implementation of such technologies to better serve the needs of both military and civilian pilots. It also covers new information technology use in aviation systems to streamline the cybersecurity, decision making, planning, and design processes within the aviation industry. Highlighting a range of topics such as air navigation systems, computer simulation, and airline operations, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for pilots, scientists, engineers, aviation operators, air traffic controllers, air crash investigators, teachers, academicians, researchers, and students.

"An exploratory journey through the airport"--

During the early days of aviation in Collier County, Florida, planes landed on a golf course or on the beach. But, that all changed in December 1943. World War II clamored for more pilots, more gunners, and more aircraft. The Naples Airdrome was built and suddenly the skies over Naples, Florida were filled with P-39s, P-40s, B-17s, and RP-63s. The orange "Pinball" (RP-63) participated in the Army Airforce's flexible gunnery training program. Hundereds of pilots and gunners were trained for combat and sent to the Pacific or European fronts. Here is the story of an airport and it's people. Follow the making of an airfield, hollowed out in the sawgrass and swamps of Collier County. From alligator wrestling, bivouacs and beach parties to tragedies, hurricanes, and disasters, learn all about the life at Naples Airdrome. Here is the sweeping story of an airport, from military occupation in 1941 to aviation's premier destination for the rich and famous in the 1980s. Here is a rich fascinating history of the Naples Municipal Airport's spirit and mission to the world of aviation.