<< Dupe post. Sorry. >>

[This message has been edited by hnechets (edited 08-27-2001).]

Southern Airways.

Sometime around 1984. Took a DC-3 to Atlanta, connecting to (??somewhere up North. Probably Philly).

SO SICK, I could not move. The plane went UP(not too bad), AND THEN IT WENT down(BAD, real bad). And it went DOWN ore than it went UP. Only time in my life I've used the barf bag. I don't really remember, but it had some kind of script on it to the effect of "In the event of discomfort."

Or something like that. I though it was a real kinda stupid at the time. Discomfort?

Changed to a jet in Atlanta. At the time, it could have been a 707 or a DC-8. Couldn't possibly tell you which. Only that it had 4 engines on the wings. And, oh, man! What a flight. 2 X 2 seating, got a meal, sitting by the window, and the plane was smooth as silk. Airsickness went away and I saw the clouds above for the first time in my life. ANd had my first in-flight meal. No clue what it was now, but...it was...

Magical.

People's Express DCA-EWR-SFO. Did that like 10 times.

Eastern DCA-MIA-MBJ. Did that about 15 times.

Pan Am DCA-JFK-CDG. Did that like 4 times.

And I used to fly UA quite a bit before Jim Goodwin drove them out of....oh wait, not yet.... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

I used to fly PA60/61 a lot, the IAD-FRA RT, in Clipper Class. In the mid-to-late 1980s this run was luxurious, sad and fascinating all at once. Luxurious because C class was 2-2-2 in a 747. Sad because the cabin got ever more empty over time, especially after Lockerbie. Fascinating because a lot of spooky Washington types used to ride that flight -- sometimes you'd swear half the State Department or NSA was on there with you.

What was your last Pan Am flight? Mine was not the FRA run from Dulles but the LHR run, PA106/107, in early 1990, just before they sold the Heathrow rights to UA. Those flights weren't luxurious or fascinating, just sad. My fiance and I took advantage of a panic PA sale and paid $298 each to go over for the weekend, and even at those prices there weren't more than 100 pax on board these ancient, scorched, dingy 747-100s -- either way. The whole back Y cabin was curtained off and dark. It was like a ghost plane. The FAs went about their business looking tight-lipped and stoic, knowing the entire proud enterprise was doomed. We all stretched out and slept in the middle seats.

Iraq invaded Kuwait about four months later and cooked Pan Am's goose for good.

Continental bought People Express, New York Air, and (the original) Frontier all around the same time... probably with a 12-month period. Meantime, Frank Lorenzo, who controlled both Continental and Eastern through Texas Air, was busy stripping Eastern of its assets, including its share of System One (the CRS), which he sold to himself for a song. Eventually, when Eastern went into Ch. 11 (due to the pilots' strike) he cherry-picked the assets to sell to Continental, which is how CO wound up with some EA routes, although they decided to give up the Atlanta hub. Of course, Eastern never flew again and switched to Chapter 7 or 13 or something. The nominal President of Eastern during much of this period was former astronaut Frank Borman, who probably should have stuck to lunar landers. Later, Eastern was briefly run by Martin Shugrue, who was also involved in the PanAm bankruptcy.

For the record, Hughes AirWest, Southern Airways, and North Central Airlines merged in 1979 to form Republic Airways, which flew until about 1986.

[This message has been edited by RichG (edited 08-29-2001).]

PA 47/46 (IIRC), early 90's, HAM-JFK-HAM on an A 310 in Clipper Class. Those were the times...

From working the Midwest in the early 80's, I remember a couple of airlines that have not gotten a call yet in this thread:

Air One - This outfit was based in St. Louis and had the all FC configuration and service idea years before Midwest Express. They seemed to have the most attractive FA's in the business and I loved it and always tried to get it, but I think that the financing ran out in less than one year.

Britt - A commuter operation out of Southern Indiana (Terre Haute, I think). They used the oldest, rattiest, most second and third-hand planes that they could find, and my runs from IND to EVV were frequently pure adventure. It was axiomatic that Billy Britt never cleaned or fixed a plane if he could avoid doing so, but it finally caught up with him when two of them went down within a year of each other, and if memory serves, the Feds yanked his certificate.

Note to JerryFF - I don't remember Mo'-Agony,
but it sounds likely. When I worked upstate NY and Quebec in the 70's I called my territory "the route of the Slowhawk."

I guess I'm one of the senior citizens on the board too. I remember barnstorming flights to nowhere. In the early/mid 50s there was a clapped out DC-3 flown out of LGA by a pilot who must have left most of his nerves somewhere over Berlin. Anyway, for 5 bucks you got a 45 minute flight over NYC. It was my first flight in, gulp, 1955.

I remember when they gave out free cigarettes on the flights; little packs of 3 or 4 smokes with the company logo on the pack. Playing cards too. People dressing up to fly; women in white gloves and hats. I remember Icelandic Air in the late 60s; you could get high on the secondhand smoke!

More recently I remember the Deli and Pub flights that UA and CO used to run on the transcons. The back of the L1011 had rows of seats pulled out for a bar/sandwich area.

And I remember when a first class seat was just a dream......

[/b] I was living in DC then. The same day there was a fatal crash on the subway with, I think, 4 or 5 people being killed. My drive to work took me past the crash site at river level and for at least a week afterwards the whole area stank of jet fuel.

My sister reminded me of how I was visiting my Grandma in New York for about a year:

TRUMP SHUTTLE!

koko: Eastern Shuttle -> Trump Shuttle -> U.S. Air Shuttle: all same company. Well, actually, Donald Trump bought the shuttle-related assets from Eastern in their "fire sale" before the bankruptcy, including planes, crews, and the new terminal Eastern had just built at the Eastern http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif end of LGA. Later, Trump sold his shuttle company to U.S. Air, and they soon built their new terminal as an add-on to the Shuttle terminal. That's why the layout is so strange inside, floors are not at the same levels in the two airside wings, etc. The West side of the building is an add-on to the much smaller East side.

When I was living in Hawaii in the early 80s we had Hawaii Express - with coupons for 1 way HNL to LAX flights for $70 - too bad I was stuck with them when they went under.

And Mid Pacific Air - which caused a massive fare war for interisland flights - I think it got down as low as $9.95 for standby, and $14.95 for confirmed.

I'm know there were some others - any kamaainas out there remember?
I'm sure

Believe it or not, a couple of others just came to mind:

Kiwi International - This outfit rose from the ashes of Eastern, with virtually all of the cockpit and cabin crews being oldtimers from that defunct airline. They flew all coach configured 727's between EWR and a couple of destinations including MDW, SJU (hence the "International" in the name), and PBI. The aircraft interiors were distinguished by an enormous exit row, for they had simply removed the row in front of the standard exit row without putting anything in between. That was their equivalent of FC and it was almost always available when I asked for it. I used it extensively out to MDW to hook up with Southwest to run to the Lower Midwest and Mid South(eg. SDF, BNA, BHM). Generous connection time was always dialed in because this was an airline whose flights got more and more delayed as the day wore on, you could count on a minimum of 2 hours on the evening flights, and eventually I could no longer use them for connections because of that. The last time that I flew them was out of PBI and they were stacked over EWR for a while when they announced that they would need to put down in PHL for refueling. At that stage, I grabbed my suitcase from the overhead, got off the plane, and called my brother-in-law who lives in Philly to come get me and take me to my crashpad in NJ. I never flew with them again because they went belly-up shortly thereafter.

Christman Air - A commuter line that I got maybe 20 years ago once from PIT to CAK (is that the right designator for Akron-Canton, OH?). I don't remember much about them except that they were on time.

There probably are others that will come to mind from time to time and I will chime in again here when they do.