Originally Posted by
Nagasaki Joe
That's why many Japanese had a nickname for it back in the day and called it "Northworst Airlines".
An undeserved reputation IMHO. I flew TPAC close to a 500 times on NWA. Very reliable. Great mileage program. Good seats for the time. Decent service. They had a pretty good operation in Japan and were very popular with Japanese tourists (although JAL had a certain snob appeal with Japanese businessmen.)
Cold war-like it may have been, but it was nothing like the security you would have experienced crossing the border from the Soviet Union to East Berlin.
Quite true because East Berlin being 500 miles away had no border with the Soviet Union. Mistaken geography aside, I crossed the Berlin Wall through Checkpoint Charlie several times in '77, and at the time, the East Germans were actually pretty relaxed compared to the security guards when Narita first opened. The West Germans on the other hand were freaking out about the Badaer Meinhof gang at that time, and I actually spent several hours being hauled in and interrogated at local police stations on a couple of occasions.