Promise Partner

Susan G. Komen for the Cure has many visible partners from Yoplait to AT&T to BCBG to Zeta Tau Alpha to New Balance and hundreds more. My co-worker, Lindsay, and I were provided a great opportunity this past Tuesday as we were invited to visited one of the Komen national sponsors…….American Airlines. Komen has had a long standing partnership with American Airlines which led to a joint agreement ending in the Komen ribbon adorning a handful of American’s planes. One of the 757s had landed in Tulsa for an inspection on the landing gear and we got the call………One of the Komen planes are out at the maintenance hangars would your office staff be interested in coming out to see? Lindsay and I jumped on the opportunity. You may be thinking, it is just an airplane isn’t it, doesn’t it look like any other. The answer is yes, however if we had not gone out there we would not have had an airport adventure of a life-time.

We learned the history behind how the design of the ribbon on the plane was going to be laied out. Get this…..an American Airlines engineer was sitting in his office, he took a piece of ribbon, a model airplane and a fan. The engineer was interested to see how the ribbon would contour to the plane with the nose of the plane facing the fan. The result from the ribbon, model airplane and fan test is now seen on a small fleet of AA planes. As an interesting side note, American Airlines has only one other time put any decal or color other than red, white and blue on their airplanes. They have one plane with a yellow ribbon as a token of appreciation for the all the amazing veterans that have so bravely served our country.

Upon walking into an AA plane proudly displaying the Komen ribbon you see this………..



Lindsay and I spent a lot of time learning the history of the how the ribbon decal was placed on the very first Komen American Airlines plane.




We learned what the maintenance crew inspects and fixes on AA planes, we more or less learned the ins and outs of the American Airlines base in Tulsa.

At the very end of our time on the base, Lindsay and I got to see the inside of an airplane that is having a face lift. It was quite odd to be inside a plane that didn’t have a lot of guts. In fact Lindsay equated it to being in a surgical wing of a hospital.





All the steps their mechanics take to make sure we are safe in the sky is amazing, I will never again be nervous to fly American. They may have massive delays, but by golly their planes are safe.

Happy Flying!!