Скачать или смотреть The Airline That Never Flew: The Strange History of Chesway Global Airlines

December 7 is International Civil Aviation Day. But as the airline industry and airline enthusiasts around the world celebrate the importance of commercial air travel, there's one major carrier that they'll never mention: Chesway Global Airlines.

Founded in 1977, Chesway Global was a groundbreaker with its attention-getting 1970s innovations, including:

• The first disco-dancing flight attendants
• The first inflight live concert by the Village People and Donna Summer
• The first wide-body jumbo jets to serve Paducah, Kentucky and Redding/Red Bluff, California
• The first commercial carrier to have the guts to be featured in an airline disaster movie (with Paul McCartney and Wings performing "With a Little Luck" onboard a soon-to-be-hijacked Chesway Global Lockheed L-1011)

Passengers crowded airports around the United States and in major foreign cities as well, decked out in platform shoes and sparkly jumpsuits as they waited in line for hours, just for a chance to fly the decade's hippest airline.

So why don't more people recall this legendary international carrier? The thing is, it wasn't easy to fly Chesway Global.

Because the airline never actually existed.

Chesway Global was a fantasy airline, a fictional airline, the imaginary creation born in the head of a 7th-grade boy named Mark Chesnut who was obsessed with travel and the glamour of the airline industry. Chesnut pulled out all the stops to create an airline that spoke to all of the passions of the day, as well as his own passion for air travel (his equally airline-obsessive best friend JJ, meanwhile, created his own imagine airline, too: Catalines International, which was known for gimmicks like the Hawaiian Kid Center, which basically consisted of strapping children to jungle gyms in the cargo holds of Hawaii-bound jumbo jets).

Today, Mark Chesnut is an award-winning travel writer and the author of the new book, "PREPARE FOR DEPARTURE: Notes on a Single Mother, a Misfit Son, Inevitable Mortality and the Enduring Allure of Frequent Flyer Miles." (Vine Leaves Press, 2022) The book — which has been described as both heartbreaking and hilarious — is a memoir that, among other things, explores the roots of wanderlust and the importance of following your dreams. If you're a travel fanatic, airline enthusiast, frequent flyer or an over-imaginative misfit still finding your own path in life, this book just might be the next trip you should take (the book also tells the story of a mother and her travel writer son facing the final months of the mother's life as they revisit their lives together).

"Today, I see Chesway Global as a symbol of the hopes and dreams of a kid who knew what he loved, even if it didn't make sense to a lot of other people," Chesnut says. "Few people understood my passion or my imaginary airline, but that never mattered. In order to be happy, you need to follow your passions and let your dreams fly."

See more here: https://www.amazon.com/Prepare-Depart...
Happy flying!