Museum of Flight to Host Archive of Skyjack Magazine, the 1990s Queer Air Travel Zine

BY MARK CHESNUT

Back in the 1990s, when I first launched Skyjack Magazine — the first and only fanzine for LGBTQ+ people who fly — I wasn’t thinking about posterity. I just wanted to cover the airline industry in a way that no one else had: through a queer and pop culture lens.

Now, more than 30 years later, Skyjack’s historical significance is being recognized in a way I never could have imagined: it's landing in the Museum of Flight, the world's largest independent nonprofit air and space museum.

I’m donating the complete Skyjack archive — all 11 densely packed issues produced between 1993 and 1997 — to this vast museum, which is the ultimate "heavy hitter" in aviation preservation. It's a big deal: the Museum of Flight is home to 175 aircraft, millions of rare photographs and a world-class research library.

The Museum of Flight is also committed to documenting the contributions and experiences of underrepresented people in the aviation world — and that includes the LGBTQ+ community. Having all 11 issues of my 1990s labor of love accepted into their permanent collection means that the unique and underreported history of queer sky-culture will be accessible to researchers and the public in perpetuity. 

Skyjack Magazine featured the voices of LGBTQ+ pilots, flight attendants, industry executives, travel industry experts, airline enthusiasts and frequent flyers — and their stories deserve to be heard.

This is exciting. I'm  thankful to the folks at the Museum of Flight for accepting this archive. (I’m also hopeful that a few pages of Skyjack might sneak their way into public view someday. The facility stages exhibits with a variety of intriguing themes — including "Runway to Runway: Styles and Stories of Flight Attendant Fashions," which takes off April 25, 2026. Given how much Skyjack obsessed over the intersection of galley politics and polyester blends, it feels like a match made in aviation heaven.)

To celebrate the archive’s new permanent home, I’m continuing the digital re-release of every issue of Skyjack Magazine, here on Departure Level. The physical copies will soon receive the white-glove treatment in Seattle, of course, but uploading digital versions helps to make Skyjack Magazine even more accessible.

We've already revisited the hopeful takeoff of Skyjack Issue 1 and the celebratory, post-Stonewall 25 energy of Skyjack Issue 2 (which marked the purchase of Skyjack Magazine by a publishing company called Practical Graphics, which retained me as the editor). 

Now, we’ve reached a slightly more turbulent — although still witty and camp-infused — altitude with Skyjack Issue 3, which was published in 1994. This is the first time this issue has been released to the public since its original publication date, and it's overflowing with topics both serious and tongue-in-cheek. 

If Issue 1 heralded the chaotic birth of a queer air-travel zine and Issue 2 was the moment I realized people were actually reading it, Issue 3 was the point where we discovered how broad our coverage could be — spanning journalism, activism, nostalgia, camp, Hollywood glamour and aviation nerdery, all sharing the same tray table.

1994 was a year of profound contradictions: LGBTQ+ folks were fighting for the most basic of corporate benefits while simultaneously being scapegoated for a global pandemic. But Skyjack Magazine — which I named after a campy 1970s airline disaster movie — never lost its sense of humor. 

Scroll down or click here to view the full PDF of Skyjack Issue 3 and step back into a world where Continental Airlines was the "Official Airline of Gay Games IV" (the "Proud Bird With the Rainbow Tail"?) and Kiwi International Air Lines was the spunky newcomer bravely advertising in the "gay press."

As you're scrolling, be on the lookout for an ad in this issue for the very first edition of Turbulence,  Skyjack Magazine's annual fundraiser for nonprofit airline industry organizations. This event grew larger every year and became quite a spectacle — stay tuned for videos and photos from future Turbulence events. 

Here are five highlights from this 1994 time capsule. These articles remind us why queer airline history and culture  is worth saving — and why I’m so glad that Skyjack Magazine finally found a home where it can never be erased. 

The cover story, "Much Ado About Gaetan: AIDS, the Airlines and the Legend of Patient Zero," is the issue's most significant piece of investigative soul-searching. For years, the media had demonized Gaetan Dugas — an Air Canada flight attendant — as the "vampire" who single-handedly brought AIDS to North America. In Issue 3, we tackled this myth head-on through the lens of John Greyson’s musical film Zero Patience.

The article also features a touching interview with Sally Hill, a former colleague who remembered Dugas not as a villain, but as a "gorgeous," "impeccable dresser" who made straight pilots cringe with his flamboyance. It was a vital piece of myth-busting, reminding our readers that Gaetan was a friend and a coworker, not a monster. (Plus, where else but Skyjack could you find a serious discussion of AIDS activism paired with a review of a movie featuring a duet by a pair of singing anuses?)

While we were busy humanizing our own, the airlines were busy... making lists. In 1994, a California jury awarded $275,000 to Joseph A. Sullivan, a former Delta Air Lines employee, after the carrier was caught keeping a secret list of employees with HIV. Delta claimed the list was for "training and counseling supervisors," but the jury (rightly) saw it as a massive invasion of privacy.

As noted in the issue, airlines in the 1990s had a "strange operating policy" of not doing anything to comply with sensitivity until they were forced to by a lawsuit. It’s a sharp reminder of the "AIDS-phobia" that permeated the industry — and why we needed a media outlet like Skyjack to keep people informed.

To balance out the heavy news, Issue 3 takes a deep dive into bizarre airline history with a look at United Air Lines’ "Executive Men Only" flights from the 1950s and 60s. Imagine a DC-6 departing from New York's Laguardia Airport  at 5:00 PM, populated entirely by businessmen being served "steaks cooked to order," cocktails and cigars.

The airline even provided slippers and the latest stock market reports. While these flights were intended for the "Executive" man (who was presumably straight and heading home to a suburban wife), looking back at a plane full of men being pampered with slippers and hors d'oeuvres has a bit of a gay vibe, too. It’s the kind of high-camp history we loved to celebrate. 

Following up on the benefit discussions in Issue 2, we reported that Air Canada had finally opened the door for same-sex benefits — "even if just a little bit." That year, the Canadian carrier began allowing gay and lesbian employees to travel with a "spouse or friend."

It wasn’t an easy win; these benefits were actually rejected at the bargaining table and only came about because of government pressure regarding "gender discrimination." It’s fascinating to see the birth of the "domestic partner" travel pass, which we now take for granted, framed as a revolutionary concept.

Issue 3 also continues one of my favorite recurring features: an ongoing roundup of Hollywood movies with air travel themes — specifically, the unflattering flicks that the airlines might prefer you not watch. I called this series “More Movies the Airlines Won’t Show You.” It was my personal forum for gleefully skewering Hollywood’s (often ridiculous) take on airline disaster melodrama and airborne camp. 

In this issue: A review of “The Crowded Sky,” a 1960 sudser with a stewardess named Kitty who declares, "I'm the ex-champ of tramps, and ex-tramps make the best wives."

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ABOUT MARK CHESNUT

Mark Chesnut is a New York City-based journalist, editor, travel industry consultant and public speaker with more than 30 years of experience. The winner of the 2019 NLGJA Excellence in Travel Writing Award, Mark is the author of the book Prepare for Departure. Follow him on Instagram!