From a little different perspective, I actually miss the chicken (?) Caesar, the tuna, and the chicken salad (4 napkins and a ruined shirt later) sandwiches. I know it may be demented but I liked them, even after many, many servings. Oh, and I almost forgot, the excellent roast beef that was very rarely served.

...you could fly EWR-IAH on a brand new 777 and being amazed about the great IFE and wider seats in Y and thinking the adjustable head rest was a great concept (I rarely play with the head rest since then)

Meals in Y.

When Meals in Y were down graded to "snacks" post 9/11 that are better than today's meals. I really liked those mircowaved cheeseburgers they called snacks. It was fun assembleling them.

Getting on a bus to board an ATR.

When what is now baggage claim at EWR T3 was the parking garage.

I remember when back in the "bad old days," when you ran into a flight attendant outside of their work and they were reluctant to tell you that they worked for Continental, because they took so much grief about everything from the public.

I was always suprised at this, because at least back then, Continental always treated me very well. I felt sorry for the poor flight attendants, and I always tried to encourage them.

Some of my fondest CO memories -

*DC10 Pub Flights LAX-HNL - Way cool

*When DEN was a hub

*200,000+ Mile bonus for completing several R/T's within a stated time
period, all fare classes qualified.

*Full segs & eqms for any fare class or any purchase point

*An operational U/G NRT-IAH

*CO Lite - Fly a companion for a penny each way

Looking back, they've been pretty good to me over the years - I have earned over 2.5 million miles with CO and have redeemed them all without any problems ever.

-flying 747 EWR-LAX in 1987 after CO bought People's

-promotional scratch off cards with a destination and the month you
could fly. I won Sydney and couldn't make it that month. 1987

-being upgraded without status to C on my honeymoon LAX-HNL on a
747 in 1990

-real meals in coach EWR-Florida on A-300's late 80's early 90's

- pubflights on DC-10

how about those gold swizzle sticks that featured different cities that continental flew too. i think the hnl swizzle stick had a pineapple on the top of it. down the side it would say fly continental to hawaii. always enjoyed those.

Then there were the giant frog covered hams that they used to staple to the seat backs. They would pass out large feathers to poke them with, then swap them with row mates.

Another one for my list. In 1987, Continental ran a promotion where you could redeem Kroger grocery receipts for vouchers that were worth a significant savings on a Continental domestic roundtrip. I have no idea what the ratio of dollars spent at Kroger to savings at Continental was, but it was apparently pretty good. I was 13 at the time and my family of five used this promotion to fly us all IAH-BOS for a summer vacation in New England. It was actually my first trip on Continental. We lived in a very small town and the closest Kroger was 50 miles away in a city we visited at least twice a month for trips to the mall, movies, and restaurants there. After this promotion started, we took the ice chest with us every time we were going anywhere where there was a Kroger, and loaded up on groceries we would use anyway to get the receipts that could be exchanged for the CO travel vouchers. My sisters and I also would canvass the parking lot picking up every discarded and dropped Kroger receipt we could find. After a few months of doing this, we had enough to get the full savings possible in the promotion for our family trip to Boston. Then it turned out the program had been very popular and the CO vouchers were running in short supply. After trips to four or five travel agents and the ticket counters at BPT and HOU (yes, Hobby) we were able to get all five vouchers. I still remember the look on the lady's face at HOU when we were redeeming all those receipts as she added them up to verify we had spent enough at Kroger. The best was when we got to some of the receipts picked up out of the parking lot that were stained with oil, tire treads, and dirt.

In the end we had a great trip to New England, although the flights on CO were not so great. But I think I remember my Dad saying we were able to fly five people for something like $250-300 because of that promotion, so we couldn't complain too much about the bad flights.

Now those are 2 things I will never miss Remember that horrible music that use to play, on and on, while you were on hold at midnight praying that some other Gold (or top) elite wasn't just ahead of you snagging that F seat on your flight? And with no upgrade waitlist, I'd approach the crowded gate, with my upgrade cert in hand, only to be told ...'you'll just have to wait', then trying to count how many seats vs people ahead of you were going for those same F seats?

For those of you EWR hub'ers, taking CO out of what is now the Air Cargo Terminal before the current A-B-C set-up

I think the old North terminal is long gone. I do vaguely remember that flights to DEN went from there during ski season. I remember taking PE from there. What a dungeon those loooong corridors were.

All I remember aside from the annoying tune is 'Pack your guayabera...Continental now serves XX destinations in Mexico!'

getting three hots in Y fll to hnl. you would get pancakes fll-iah, more pancakes iah-lax and then another meal lax-hnl.

A300 flights to and from fll were always cool. one time, iah-fll the FA asked us all to move to the outside seats so competitors thought the flight was full.

this particular flight was on an ex-EAL A300 with those funky gold and brown and mustard seats.

*DC10 Pub Flights LAX-HNL - Way cool

Pub flights were standard fare IAH to LAX in the 80's since I took them with regularity. For some reason, I don't remember the movies on those DC-10's.

upgrade cert in hand,


I remeber those upgrade certs well. In the mid 90's, I had my family of 5 on a trip back from SJU. CO originally flew the SJU-EWR segment with a 727 and didn't have room in the front for everyone. However, that day they switched to a DC-10 so we all got upgraded (after some fussing at the gate with the upgrade certs) to BF which at the time was very fancy. My children loved flying in first after that

How about the DC-9 10 from IAH to HOU. That was a fun 12 minute trip. I really miss the flights to HOU which is much more convienent for me than IAH.

I remember when CS flew 747's b/w GUM & HNL and had 3 classes of service back in the late 80's / early 90's. My gradmother would always fly first class, while she put my sister and I in business...it was so funny...she would always say, "now you and your sis stay behind that curtain and in the cabin you're in". She promised that when I had graduated from high school, she would allow me to try their first class, but by that time, CO/CS had discountinued their 3 class service, and introduced BusinessFirst. I also remember when the flight attendants in BusinessFirst would wear the white jackets inflight...that was very nice...now they wear the blue ones...