We still have at least one aerodrome here in the US. Cool place to visit when they do the airshows.
I first encountered “aeroplane” as a young child in an older book for children, and ever since then I haven’t been able to shake the notion that it’s a cutesified, old-fashioned, kiddie version of “plane” or “airplane,” much as “kittycat” and “puppydog” are baby talk for “cat” and “dog.”
I know you asked about young British people but I’m in Australia and I don’t know anyone, young or old, who says airplane. Even typing the word feels really wrong.
My Kindle has ‘aeroplane mode’ and my old Galaxy had ‘flight mode’, which is what the flight attendants call it when they make their announcements. My iPhone has ‘airplane mode’ and I find it quite jarring to see that on the screen.
30 here, (still young, honest!), aeroplane, definitely, and any young rapscallions that dare say otherwise in my hearing will get a clip round the lughole. Or I’ll just be sarcastic at them.
“Aeroplane”? What luxury. We were lucky to get a catapult ride.
Quite. The only possible known reference would be Rex Warner’s anti-fascist The Aerodrome which I have never read. May be very good, but I lost any taste for 1920s-60s fiction before I could get around to it.
As for the question it seems so trivial a distinction I might use either at will.
Much as my daughter used to say “'spic’le Me” (for “Despicable Me”) and “Rouwn-Bout” for “Roundabout”, to me “air’plane” sounds like a small child trying to say “aeroplane”.
:dubious: Aerodrome was certainly in common use in Britain much more recently than 1941 (when that was published), like when I was a kid in the 1950s and '60s. However, as I said, I think it has pretty much died out now.
So, what do you call someone who fabricates aeroplanes - an aerosmith?
d&r
Heh. Google dosn’t do anything with those, but try typing them into the search box on Wikipedia.
do most Americans even say airplane? because in the movies they simply use ‘planes’, i don’t think i recall otherwise.
More often than we say automobile, but yes, plane is more common.
I didn’t know airplane was a real word until this thread. Other than Jefferson Airplane of course but I took it to be like Beatles, a made up word used as a rock band name.
What intrigues me is that while there is this evidently very much alive British/American English divide on “aeroplane” vs. “airplane”, the pronunciation of “aeroplane” by Brits and Americans vary. Probably because we Americans are “forcing it” when we do 
In the intro to their song “Goodbye, Blue Sky” (sorry, the link I found has a 15 second commercial before starting…), recorded in 1978-79 by the British band Pink Floyd, a child says “Look Mummy, there’s a aeroplane up in the sky.” But to my (American) ear, it sounds just like “airplane”, albeit with an obviously British accent; the “o” in “aeroplane” is so light as to be imperceptible to me. And since the lyrics on the album sleeves (or CD inserts) don’t include this audio mise-en-scene intro, I have (until now) thought of this as an example of “airplane” bleeding over into British use.
On the other hand, The Red Hot Chili Peppers (an American band) have a 1995 song “Aeroplane”, where I assume they used the word “aeroplane” to fit the meter of the lyrics and possibly to evoke some kind of WWI Sopwith Camel propeller type plane. They clearly stress the “o” so that even without having seen the song lyrics or title, I knew they were using the term “aeroplane” not “airplane”, and from the first time I heard it on the radio I considered it an affectation for artistic purposes.
Yet more than one ex-pat Brit in the US has already chimed in to say “airplane” still sounds odd to them.
Did they change the title of the classic comedy movie with Leslie Nielsen to Aeroplane! for Britspeak audiences? 
It’s called * Flying High * in Australia, but I believe it was released under its original name in the UK.
Similarly, the American group the Box Tops in 1967 asked for a ticket on an aeroplane, because they didn’t have time to take a fast train.
British pronunciations are wonderful when the American pronunciation doesn’t scan. Not sure whether Brit songwriters ever do it in reverse.
IMDB doesn’t list a UK alternate title, though it was apparently O Aeroplano in Portugal.
And in Steve Allen’s “This Could Be the Start of Something,” you’re up in an aeroplane, or dining at Sardi’s.
It’s all in the early childhood exposure