Alaska used to operate 737-400 Combi aircraft with a smaller passenger cabin and the rest was cargo but they already retired these

AFAIK KLM still has some wide body combi aircraft.

I know they had some 747-400 combis. Those were retired earlier this year.

I don’t think there are any other combi aircraft in the KLM fleet at this point.

That's certainly possible. I haven't been near AMS or any other airport to see them recently.

I grew up with MEM as my home airport. We always flew Delta and so we always knew we were going out of A25, A27, or A29. But wherever you were in the airport you would always hear the same familiar voice. "This will serve as a final boarding call for Northwest 123 to XXX". Same voice every time for all of those final boarding announcementa. Was this a recording or was there a very faithful NWA employee at MEM making these final boarding calls?

It's actually a fact... KLM retired its entire 747 fleet six months ago. Sad but it's done.

A shame. I had some great flights sitting in 1A. Upstairs was nice too, even with 2-2 seating the spacing allowed easy access to the window. But 1A was a great seat.

I can remember when the airline was called "Northwest Orient", and it seemed to be like a Pan-Am of the Pacific (i.e., Pan-Am was big in Latin American & Europe), with plenty of flights to the Pacific Rim. I suppose that once China developed good airlines, there wasn't much of a market for that travel area.

I have flown into Memphis only once (I have a sister that lives there, but I just drive from SELA to visit her). It was when KLM had just bought Northwest, and Memphis was one of the minor hubs, so KLM flew AMS-MEM. I remember going through customs where we were instructed 4 at a time to place our bags on the floor, and the drug dog was brought in - with his handler saying, "hey buddy, do you smell something"? Wouldn't you know it, the dog was getting excited around my bags :eek: :eek: :eek:, but it turned out to be those of the guy next to me, When the agent asked him what he was doing in Amsterdam, he said, "I partied". :D

Tell me about it... the single seats in the nose of the KLM 747s were awesome

For years, PMNW served HKG, CAN, PVG, and PEK plus the old Taipei airport all from its NRT hub in addition to flights to other Asian countries.

Ah the old DC-10 days out of DTW. I remember throughout the 90's flying NW 32/33 to LGW and back.

Pan Am was big to the Pacific, too. I started traveling to Asia in 1983 (NW17 from JFK to NRT to HKG, NW18 HKG-NRT-JFK). NW had one satellite at Narita, PanAm had the adjacent satellite. There was no club for business class at Narita for NW passengers, we had a Pan Am Clipper Club membership and had to go across to the Pan Am satellite. Always had to explain to security why we were going to the "wrong" satellite. A couple of years later Pan Am sold all of those Pacific routes to United.

NW17/NW18 were some nice flights on the 747-200, even before World Business Class. Great staff, even better on the intra Asia flights.

I remember a time when the PMNW lounge at NRT was landside, small and windowless and in a strange location up some stairs. This would have been the early-mid 1990s. It was an issue because if a connecting passenger went landslide to use the lounge, there was a Japanese departure fee due, IIRC 3000 yen, to be paid in cash only. This was before T1 at NRT was renovated.

Much later the AF lounge next to one of the PMNW lounges was an excellent peaceful and quiet refuge from the WCs. I remember spending some time there right after the Richard Reid??? incident of the guy with explosives in his shoes, when I spent a chunk of my time in Tokyo watching the news and being concerned about whether my flight would operate on schedule under reasonable conditions. I liked to use that AF lounge when it was open, even though it was a bit dated and the PMNW WC food eventually dominated its offerings. IIRC it had champagne and showers, and vaguely French food such as fashionable small sandwiches. It had an interesting modern style.

In my experience the DTW and MSP-based staff were awful, but most of the ones based in Asia were lovely