[dredmorbius]

Pretty good, though:

- Shortest route from Chicago to Rome would be west->east, not east->west.

- 1930s air travel/mail delivery would likely have been by DC-3 (introduced 1935). Early models had a range of 1000 miles, later extended in the DC-3A to 2100 miles. Military C47 A/B aircraft had a 1600 mile range. So you'd have to introduce a few more hops on the map.

- A package would more likely have traveled via ground route, mostly ship. A trans-Asiatic route would be highly unfeasible (or would make for another Indian Jones movie: "Delivery of the Misrouted Journal").

Still, nice touch.

[podperson]

Actually it's pretty clear in the movies that most of the long distance air travel is by some variant of flying boat (he's seen getting on and off an Pan Am clipper), and the dotted lines in the map do not show refueling hops.

If you look at the history of Pan Am, it started out operating two flying boats: Sikorsky S-38 and S-40. The S-40 had a range of 875 miles (but can land in more places than a DC-3).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_am#Clipper_era

That said -- Chicago to Italy should definitely be easterly.