Airliner Models: Marketing Air Travel and Tracing Airliner Evolution Through Vintage Miniatures, Hardcover

Containing more than 800 photographs, Airliner Models chronicles the use of professionally made airliner models in the marketing of air travel since 1919. For model collectors, the airliner type, makers name, scale, approximate age and the materials used are detailed for each model illustrated. A short history of significant model-making companies is covered.

With the onset of online bookings and the closure of airline offices and travel agents, the use of models is fast vanishing forever. The focus of this book is to preserve this fascinating era when models were a significant marketing tool. To ensure that these models, at least in photographic form, survive as a record for future generations, Anthony Lawler has spent eight years assembling the information and photographs to complete this book.

Anthony J. Lawler was born in South Africa in 1939. He had developed a keen interest in aviation from an early age, but in 1952 when the world's first jet airliner, the Comet 1 flew over his home city on a proving flight, his interest was really ignited. He wrote to the BOAC office in Johannesburg asking for a model, and to his great joy he was sent his first professionally made airliner model. In the next seven years he visited all the local airline offices and managed to build a small collection of models. Upon graduation in aeronautical engineering from Bristol University, he joined the sales department of Hawker Siddeley, responsible for marketing the Trident airliner. In 1971 he was seconded to Airbus Industrie to assist in sales of the first wide body twin-jet airliner, the A300, and over the last twenty years he managed sales campaigns for the Airbus airliners in USA. Since retiring in 2004 he has actively pursued his model collecting.