Come Fly the Funny Skies

As mentioned yesterday in El Posto Numero Dos, we here at the YAB offices have thrown ourselves a little fiesta, in honor of switching over to Blogger’s new and improved program without all of our past funny experiencing a fiery death. (We see that GardenSt-GoldenSt has done the same – welcome, neighbor.) It’s not often we do such a thing, but the new colors have everyone in a good mood, and coupled with a relatively new post from Nordblog, we’re “in a happy land.”

Now we also know in this Season of Giving, one should spend their cash on buying gifts for others. However, we admit, YAB’s petty cash has been burning a hole in our desk, and we’re tired of spending it on re-filling the fire extinguisher. And since blogs aren’t really expected to buy gifts for other websites, we broke the bank on our first major real estate acquisition.

We bought an airport.

Personally, we had no idea we were in the market for a hub of airborne transportation, but once the opportunity arose, we couldn’t help but bid. Of course, one might think from reading YAB that we’re not the biggest fan of the airline biz. On the way New Orleans we opined about the lack of legroom on modern jets. They once tried to prevent me from getting on my plane on account of a data entry error. And then there was the time we rode the Vehicular Car-ma roller coaster to a flight bound to Maine. And hell, we related the mind-crushing ride that is grad school to a flight that’s just a few hours longer than we’d like it to be. So why the heck would we want to get into the biz?

It’s all in the initials.

Airport codes are used to simply identify airports by both the public and baggage handlers who can easily ruin Christmas for you. They are determined by the International Air Transport Association, which we are sorry to say is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. There are over 17,500 codes, so if you want to learn them all, say goodbye to free time, and well, friends. For the most part, these codes either correspond to the name of the airport (LaGuardia-LGA, Midway – MDW) or the city itself (ATL, LAX, BOS.) However, with only so many codes to go around, sometimes the IATA needs to get creative. NAS is already taken by the Bahamas, so Nashville gets BNA, named after Berry Airfield, their early version of Nashville International. (It had a lot more twang and steel guitar.)

One airport you’ve probably never flown in or out of is the tiny airfield in Nunavut, a new offspring of Canada’s Northwest Territories. It’s known for its land mass (1st in Canada) and complete lack of people (13th in Canada), and their official government page is confusing to the untrained eye. Want to visit? Sure, you could fly into Yellow Knife or Calgary, some three hours away and then rent the rental car (there’s only one), or you could fly into our airport in Arctic Bay. Its IATA code? Yep, you guessed it.

YAB.

We have two orders of business at YAB Airport. First, the Wiki entry tells us that our only runway is composed of gravel. So, yeah, we’re going to work on that. Pave that sucker with the rest of the petty cash. Then, we’re going to move operations to Arctic Bay. I’ll runa small airline out of there, and Katie can work the diner lunch counter across the way. Surely, Harford will probably run a better, more successful rival airline across the lobby, but it’s all in good fun. Toms, bringing the Italian flavor to our ‘port, will buy a taxicab and shuttle visitors to and from the hotel. James Maugham, the only friend I have with flight experience, will serve as partner and handle most of the flying whule I take care of the business.

I suppose we have a job opening for a dim-witted mechanic with an affinity for Merlot. Any takers?