ABSTRACT
Transportation, a complex subject, divides roughly into halves: private or individual transportation, from walking and Segways to cars and (comparatively few) private airplanes, and commercial transportation, involving either human passengers or other sorts of freight. Turning to commercial transportation, air transportation has become the overwhelming means of getting people between widely different cultures. Air transport is a prime area for promotion of safety culture, which sometimes conflicts with cultural traditions of longer standing. Transportation can be integrated into lots of different cross-cultural subjects. Experiences with long-distance air travel can be discussed, and the question can be raised as to whether airports—boundary nodes—themselves share a common culture or whether they are cultural vacuums, a home only for the stateless.
