Why are skywriting messages all over L.A. lately? We have answers

On a lightly breezy afternoon, Carlos Shihady and Maram Shehada stood together at the Point Reyes Lighthouse, where the rocky land juts a finger out into the Pacific, and watched “Carlos ❤️ Maram 12 17 2022” appear in the sky. The social media element “has made this highly symbiotic,” he said, “and there’s a certain kind of elegance and prominence now in having these big displays in the sky.” For Shihady and Shehada’s June announcement, Jacuzzi turned to the Skytypers, a family-owned firm that holds a patent on the eponymous form of aerial promotion, in which bursts of smoke create images, like a giant flying wireless printer. Stinis called his operation the Skywriting Corp. of America, and that’s mainly what he did until he hit on the idea of several planes flying tightly in a row — a difficult formation known as “abreast” in pilots’ lingo — spitting out short bursts of smoke to quickly fashion more complex images that lasted longer and could be seen from greater distances. “It’s the largest form of advertising in the world” — in sheer physical size, anyway — Stinis said. “There wasn’t a desert remote enough for me to even consider it,” Jacuzzi said, “much less over Los Angeles.” Stinis, too, flatly refused that request.