Aviation fever has captured America's imagination during the Depression years. Every cinema character, from Popeye to Shirley Temple, incorporated flying, and fliers, into their productions.
This cartoon makes use of Fleischer's Tabletop process, which animates the cells vertically between set pieces, in order to create the feeling of depth. In this cartoon it's the first thing we notice, the whole exterior of the air-port is a 3d set.
The whole effect is lost in the color version, as the backgrounds is a flat redraw.
The sign on Olive Oyl's lunch room reads, "Come down and see me sometime." This is a parody of Mae West's catchphrase, "Come up and see me sometime."
Olive Oyl is saved when her skirt catches on an old fashioned weather vane. It, and the wind sock, were important tools for early aviators to help determine wind speed and direction in the days before more sophisticated instrumentation was invented.
Bluto used an early version of a helicopter rotary blade in his escape attempt. Although actual helicopters were still in the early stages of commercial development, the concept of vertical flight had been theoretically designed in the early 20th century (though there are earlier claims, too).