flying

In May 1803 a group of enslaved Africans from present-day Nigeria, of Ebo or Igbo descent, leaped from a single-masted ship into Dunbar Creek off St. Simons Island in Georgia. A slave agent concluded that the Africans drowned and died in an apparent mass suicide. But oral traditions would go on to claim that the Eboes either flew or walked over water back to Africa. For generations, island residents, known as the Gullah-Geechee people, passed down the tale. When folklorists arrived in the 1930s, Igbo Landing and the story of the flying African assumed a mythological place in African American culture. Though the site carries no bronze plaque and remains unmarked on tourist maps, it has become a symbol of the traumatizing legacy of trans-Atlantic slavery. Poets, artists, filmmakers, jazz m...

The U.S. airline industry has generally faced two obstacles in enticing more people to fly: fear and fares. Before the novel coronavirus, few feared flying thanks to the extreme rarity of airline crashes in the U.S., and domestic inflation-adjusted fares that were about the lowest ever. As a result, a record 811 million people flew within the U.S. in 2019. Today, fares are at rock bottom, but Americans’ fear of flying may be the highest it’s ever been, as the risk of sitting in an enclosed space with several hundred strangers – seemingly the perfect conditions for an infectious disease – is making most people avoid the skies. Passenger traffic plummeted 95% in April from a year earlier and remains significantly lower than normal. As an aviation historian, I feel a bit of deja vu. Almost...

Tag: flying

The Legend Of The Flying African Caused By A Mass Suicide Of Slaves

Airlines got travelers comfortable about flying again once before – but 9/11 and a virus are a lot different