76-Second Travel Show: 'Airline Logo Awards'

Episode #033
F E A T U R I N G * 4 6 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

AN ODE TO BRANIFF
There are two reasons why I've been bit by the travel bug most of my life:

• my dad buying me a sun idol outside the 1st-century pyramid at Teotihuacán outside Mexico City at five years old, and
• looking out over the pastel-colored Braniff jets at the rainy Dallas/Ft Worth Airport on the way there. And dreaming.

Airports birth many travel dreams. Looking out over runways and seeing exciting, artful planes named for far-off countries you hadn't heard of before. Some with funny logos. Others starting with 'Q' and featuring winged kangaroos. Certainly as a kid, I loved any chance to be at airports -- to me, diesel fuel in the morning smelled like victory. But mostly I loved Braniff.

It was the jet that took us most places in those early days -- trips to San Diego, to Mexico, to San Antonio, to Chicago. And it was the first jet to get serious with colors in its 'end of the plain plane' movement that led to sculptor Alexander Calder's imaginative designs for Braniff tails and fuselages in the mid '70s. Airplanes as art.

Braniff, it should be noted, originally began in the Oklahoma oil boom in 1928 as the 'TULSA-OKLAHOMA CITY AIRWAYS,' one of the great airline names of all time. It'd evolve, then it'd collapse by 1982 -- shortly after J.R. Ewing got shot on the TV show Dallas.

Considering that United/Continental -- curiously -- will be known as 'United' from 2011, but look 'Continental,' I thought it was time to tribute the best of airline logos, particularly Braniff's love of art.