Special isssue

This article addresses two central questions: how are atmospheres configured in the context of aeromobilities, and how can this context enrich the very concept of atmospheres? To pursue them, I draw on ethnographic research at Santiago International Airport, participation in aerospace fairs in Santiago, London and Lisbon, and the use of travel diaries and interviews with passengers and professionals. I develop the notion of aeromobile atmospheres to describe the politico-material interfaces in which infrastructures, bodies, regulations and imaginaries are entangled. Rather than understanding atmospheres as fleeting affective tonalities, the article shows how they emerge from material and sensory constellations and how they are staged, contested and reconfigured across scales. Three ethnographic cases orient the analysis: an incomplete journey that exposes the contingency of flight, the "ghost flights" of the pandemic that sustained systemic continuity, and aerospace fairs that project atmospheres of certainty. In bringing these cases into dialogue, the article argues that aeromobile atmospheres are simultaneously conditions of possibility and sites of friction, making visible inequalities of access, environmental contradictions and political disputes.