Back in the day, when I'd score a new used OAG, I was often interested in the movements of diminishing four engine narrow bodies, mainly the 707 and DC-8 here in the US. There were plenty of DC-8-61s still flying with DL and UA, but the standard 8 was showing up less and less. IIRC, my last flight on a standard 8 was in August of 1979 aboard United SFO-SLC.

Anyway, in perusing the pages of the OAG, Braniff always had my attention. They had only a small fleet of second hand DC-8-50s that they employed domestically, though DC-8-62s were still quite common on South American services.

Following deregulation, Braniff quickly spread its wings and expanded its national route map considerably. In Denver, where once we might see a DC-8 or 720 come up from DAL in the early 1970s, we'd now see colorful two-tone BN DC-8-50s flying into DEN from OAK, MIA and possibly MCI.

As to the question at hand, I remember now. It was IAH. This stood out because by the late 70s, BN was firmly dedicated to the hub and spoke model, which logically would've routed this flight through DFW. But NO!! It routed through Houston!

And then Tucson. What the heck was that? IAH - TUS was firmly CO territory. And then on to Vegas. Just weird. Like the route planners got drunk and decided to throw darts for prospective routes. Braniff was all over the place in the early days of deregulation.

Sadly, I never did log a flight aboard one of those beautiful BN DC-8s.

And now that I think of it, my last DC-8-50 flight was in May of 1984 with AeroMexico ACA-MEX