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October 14, 2007

Recreating an era

By Thomas Lifson

Part of the magic of movies is the ability to recreate an era, usually to look at it with a distinctly modern perspective. This week, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, Shia LeBeouf and an entire production crew for the fourth Indiana Jones movie took over part of Chandler Airport in Fresno, California. Adjacent to downtown Fresno, the field was once-upon-a-time the city's main airport, complete with an old fashioned airline terminal. Airline service was moved to the larger city-owned Fresno Air Terminal, now Fresno Yosemite International Airport, an aerodrome which holds a special place in my heart owing to its official abbreviation, which appears on baggage tags when you fly into Fresno with checked luggage: FAT. And it actually has scheduled international passenger service to Mexico.

(Somewhere in a box, I have memorabilia of a journey of Far Eastern Air Transport of Taiwan, also officially abbreviated as FAT. They even have "FAT" on the tail of their planes in big letters. However, I gave the vomit bag I purloined to my brother-in-law, who has a fantastic collection of airline vomit bags going back decades and spanning the world. And you thought it was love which unites humanity?)

A local Fresno TV station took pictures from outside the closed set, and you can catch a glimpse of the terminal painted to identify it as "Aeropuerto Internacional, de Ciudad de Mexico" a DC-3 painted in the livery of "Pan American Airways" and lots of old cars. Obviously, there's a big budget for this one.

You can watch the very brief video clip here on YouTube.
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