Originally Posted by
JoeDTW
2. Also in early 1966, Continental was only operating one round trip flight a day in its system with a Douglas DC-6B. This daily flight originated in Tulsa every morning and then terminated back in TUL every night. Identify the round trip routing flown by this aircraft along with the final destination served by the morning departure from Tulsa with the understanding the same five en route stops were made in each direction. And there was also something unique about this flight besides the fact it was CO's only DC-6B service. What was it?
This would have been the CO / UA interchange. My guess on the five intermediate stops:
TUL-OKC-ICT-DEN-BOI-PDX-SEA
This was unique because the aircraft carried both CO's and UA's logos - perhaps a precursor to the CO / AZ DC-10 operated thirty years later.
CO's annual reports from the 1960s say CO wanted to upgrade the equipment to 720s so CO could phase out the DC-6B, but UA refused, perhaps out of spite.
2. Correct! And I was unaware of the fact the DC-6B carried logos featuring both CO and UA (perhaps an unintentional sign of things to come?). The unique feature I was referring to was this round trip flight was the one and only interchange service operated by both airlines at the time.
Your routing is very close as well. The routing in the March 1, 1966 CO timetable was TUL-ICT-DEN-SLC-BOI-PDX-SEA round trip. However, the April 24, 1966 UA timetable listed an additional stop on the northwest bound routing of this interchange flight between Boise and Portland: Pendleton (PDT)....which was not listed in the CO timetable. PDT was not served on the southeast bound routing, according to the UA timetable.
It's also interesting to note that at this very same time United
was flying Boeing 720 interchange service in conjunction with another airline: Braniff International. Two round trip flights a day were operated by UA and BN with HOU-DAL-DEN-PDX-SEA and HOU-DAL-DEN-SEA routings. Of course, UA and BN never operated the Boeing 720B fanjet version of the aircraft.