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Over the last few years my Editorial ramblings have come to you from a variety of far flung hotel rooms around the globe but today they come from the airport departure lounge itself. I’m currently sitting at gate C16 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport (ORD) at the end of a few weeks traveling around the USA on a mixture of business and pleasure. When we are researching the features for the magazine I always get a kick out of looking at photographs from the heyday of air travel; the days when travel was an exotic luxury, people dressed up to fly, and flying was glamorous. Believe me though dear reader, if you could see me now I would not be the epitome of glamour! Having spent a long time delving through the archives for British Airways imagery to illustrate this special ‘BA’ themed issue I was very excited about the prospect of spending a few weeks living the jet-set lifestyle… However that was soon to come to an end. Delays Departing Heathrow two hours late set the trip off to a bad start and resulted in me reaching Dulles Airport in Washington DC too late to catch my connecting flight to Denver. To make matters worse the ineptitude of the North American carrier I was flying with meant I would miss a further two connections and I didn’t reach my destination until the small hours. Luckily the trip improved dramatically from then on, but spending so long at airports has given me plenty of time to contemplate modern air travel. As I look around the terminal here at ORD there’s a varied mismatch of individuals covering all ages and ethnic backgrounds. Ranging from the stick thin college students to the slightly rotund business traveller they seem to only share a single common trait – the desire to get from point A to point B as quickly, easily and probably cheaply as possible. Oasis A cornucopia of fast food outlets line the terminal along with shops selling a selection of goods, some more useful or tasteful than others.