Dream factories…

If someone said to you: Airports are dream factories. Would  you believe it? If your reply is “yes”, you are like me, deeply  in love  with aviation and you do not need to read on. But if you respond with an unimaginative NO, read further and let me prove you wrong.


Next time you have occasion to visit an airport, big or small, keep your eyes, and mind, open. You will see one of mankind’s oldest DREAMS coming true, we fly, we fly, happy and free.
And the machines you see, the big silver birds, aren’t they the product of the DREAMS of countless engineers, who for years and years laboured and strived to make them ever bigger, better, safer.
That young pilot on his first solo flight? Didn’t he DREAM of this day ever since he was a small kid in shorts, sitting just outside the perimeter fence, hungrily gazing at the noisy contraptions, already intoxicated with the perfume of aviation gas and kerosene…
What about the architect who built it all, subjugating his soaring designer’s spirit in the face of “restrictions on obstacles” and the need for “unimpeded and separated flow of arriving and departing passengers”, yet DREAMING up an edifice worthy of the beautiful, mystical term “airport terminal”.

That long, wide, welcoming runway, with its lights and electronic wizardry to help those roaming the skies get home safely. The concrete receiving the gentle kiss of countless aircraft tyres, who would deny it is all a pilot`s DREAM of the termination of a perfect approach to land?
Look around you in the teeming hall, at all those people, some of them sure to be on the doorstep of their DREAM holiday. And that young man with the bunch of roses? Isn’t he waiting for the girl of his DREAMS?
Airports ARE dream factories…