WHBM

That's a good point, I can't recall a One-Eleven (incidentally, that's how the type name is officially styled) with first class either. The BEA/British Airways ones certainly never had it, although the main line Tridents did.

By the way, why was it called the One-Eleven ?

WHBM

Well mostly hunches and I haven't had a go at them all.

1. Following a week of fun and sun in the LA Basin, your services have been requested in Kingman, Arizona; but first you’ve been asked to join two colleagues for a luncheon meeting at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport. Identify the four airlines that operated nonstop flights between Los Angeles and Phoenix. Should you be so inclined, have a gander at the equipment used as well...

This will be a guess, but I will go for American, TWA, Western and Continental. Aircraft types are going to be a good mixture, probably 707/720s and 727s predominating; did American have any Convairs left operating by this stage ? I would also expect the service provided may not be optimal, because it is just dependent on how longer-distance multi-stop routes manage to get scheduled.

2. Later that afternoon, you’ll need to make a connection to this airline offering nonstop service from Phoenix up to Kingman, Arizona. Identify the airline and the aircraft used on this route.

I think this depends on when in the summer of 1968 you made the trip. Bonanza Airlines was on the route, but in July 1968 they merged into Air West. They used Fairchild F.27s (which are actually Fokker F.27s licence-built by Fairchild

4. Two airlines offer nonstop service between Los Angeles and Fresno. Only one of them offers jet service, though. Identify that airline and the aircraft used.

United and Air West (or predecessor Pacific Airlines). I’d have thought both had jets by this time, 737s and DC9s respectively, so if I have to go for just one I’ll say United.

5. Southern Pacific’s San Joaquin Daylight delivers you to Oakland, California. Following two days of business meetings across the bay in San Francisco, you head out to SFO for your flight down to Long Beach. Only one airline offers nonstop service on this route, flying it twice a day with the same type of aircraft on both flights. You’ve chosen the evening flight, departing San Francisco at 7:30pm and arriving Long Beach at 8:47pm. Identify the airline and aircraft used.

I’ll go for Western. They were probably changing over from Electras to 737s on the route just at this time, so the clue is probably in the flight time. 1 hour 17 minutes ? That’s still an Electra.

6. Duty calls in Chattanooga, Tennessee. There are no direct flights between LAX and CHA, so you book an overnight flight aboard the only airline offering nonstop service between LAX and Memphis, connecting with the single daily nonstop flight between MEM and Chattanooga. Identify the airlines operating each route.

LAX to Memphis in those days – that has to be American, could be either a 707 or a 727. Memphis to Chattanooga ? Let’s guess at Southern. Aircraft type ? Wilder guess at a Martin 404.

7. Identify the four airlines that operated nonstop service between Memphis and Little Rock, Arkansas. Should you so desire, take a stab at identifying the equipment used by each airline.

Four different ones ? Pure guesses. Delta, Braniff, American, Trans-Texas. Lots of types there, DC-9s, One-Elevens, 727s, Convair 600s, probably many more,

8. Now you’re in New Orleans and have to get up to Kansas City. Only one airline operates a single nonstop on this route. Luncheon is served in both classes. Upon arrival in Kansas City, you’ll enjoy a plate of excellent barbecued ribs at Gates & Sons. Identify the airline and the aircraft used on this route.

Braniff One-Eleven.

9. Your special talents are required in Fairbanks, Alaska. No airline serving Kansas City also serves Fairbanks. You’ll have to make an interline connection in Seattle. Only one airline provides service between Kansas City and Seattle, offering a single daily nonstop in addition to a 2-stop direct flight. You book a seat in First Class on the nonstop to Seattle, but are disappointed to learn that the only airline offering the two nonstop flights from Seattle to Fairbanks operates a single class aircraft on both flights. Name the airlines involved on this itinerary and – if you feel up to it – have a go at identifying the aircraft utilized on each route.

United from Kansas to Seattle, on a 727. United always seemed a bit of a stranger in Kansas City, but managed to get this somewhat thin route. Seattle to Fairbanks nonstop sounds real S2A territory, and I think it’s the old Pan Am operation, and on a 707. It probably carried a lot of freight as well. No first class ? Is that really so much of a problem ?

10. After returning to Seattle aboard the Alaska Marine Highway, you’ve decided to fly the 130 miles south to Portland. Seven airlines offer nonstop jet service on this route. Identify each of the seven airlines and, if you like, the jets used.

Well this has to be just about everybody, running tag flights between the two and then heading south/east. OK, lets go. 1 - Air West (or the old West Coast) on F27s and DC9s. 2 – Pan Am on 707s. 3 – United on all sorts, DC8, 720, 727, 737. 4 – Western, 720Bs and 737s. 5 – Northwest, 707s, 720Bs and 727s. 6 – Eastern (headed for St Louis) on 727s. 7 – Braniff, on 727s, headed on to Texas.

11. Only one airline provides Eugene, Oregon with jet service. Which airline and what kind of jet is it?

Pan Am 707s, probably the whole lot transited Seattle, then on to London. Pan Am had done this transatlantic route from Portland back in DC7C days.

12. After laboriously checking page by page, I’ve confirmed that in 1968, only five scheduled airlines served the state of Utah. Name the airlines.

United, Western, Frontier, Air West (or is this still a pre-merger two, West Coast heading northwest and Bonanza heading southwest)

13. The only service between Milwaukee and Kansas City is limited to one direct (1-stop) flight each afternoon, departing Milwaukee at 4:30pm and arriving Kansas City at 6:05pm. A snack is served in both First Class and Coach. Name the airline and the aircraft used.

United 727 ?

14. In the June 1, 1968 OAG, I’ve identified at least six scheduled U.S. airlines (There may be more) that still operated regularly scheduled DC-3 service. Can you identify them?

Continental and Northeast would be the two major carriers I believe. Then it’s a guess among the regionals – Ozark maybe. Finally the smaller operators. PBA would likely be one. Any more than that and I’d have to be home with my DC3 documentation !

15. This airline operated two almost daily (X6, X7) jet flights from White Plains, New York to Washington National (DCA). Name the airline and the equipment.

Mohawk, with a One-Eleven.

Wally Bird

Perhaps apocryphal - First BAC airliner design + 11th Vickers airliner design = 1-11. A lot of the design work had been done by Hunting-Percival (P-109?)prior to the merger.

So what were the first 10 Vickers' designs ?

Seat 2A

Very good, WHBM. You’ve essentially got them all with just a couple slightly off. Rather than go over all of the correct ones, I’ll just fill in the rare error.

Seat 2A

Well gang, with this most recent set of questions I am going to retire from the question department and stick with attempting answers. When I started this quiz, it was with the idea that the participants would be made up primarily of people who, like myself, were interested in the airlines but not necessarily experts in the field – kind of like a bunch of neighborhood guys getting together for a friendly softball game. We’re all pretty good, but none of us are going to the pros.

Clearly the caliber of competition is significantly higher than I’d originally anticipated as many of my questions over the past couple of months suggest I’m tossing up softballs to Barry Bonds and Babe Ruth. The degree off my airline trivia knowledge is such that I’m much better suited towards attempting to answer rather than to ask questions.

Whether I ask, answer or just read, I’m continually impressed by the depth of everyone’s knowledge on the airlines past and present. As such I want to congratulate all of our participants on the impressive extent of their knowledge and thank everyone for their part in contributing to the education and/or entertainment value provided by this thread. I look forward to having a swing at any and all questions that may come up from here on.

WHBM

S2A, I enjoy your questions. Tell you what, I'll refrain from answering them, and will maybe just add little comments afterwards. It's unfair anyway being based 10 hours ahead of you ! I've also found that quite a number of the ones I put are just too obscure anyway, so I've rather stopped putting questions too (or at least, ones relating to outside the US). By the way, I never even saw a US airport until 1974.

Regarding :

This is strange. I was quite convinced this question was "Who was the only airline to operate from Portland to Europe", hence what looks like such a wacky answer. How I can have got such a bizarre misunderstanding I can't explain.

PS - who are Barry Bond and Babe Ruth ?

Seat 2A

C'mon now, WHBM, it wouldn't be right for you to intentionally not answer questions posted by anyone here. You are an exceptionally knowledgeable airline historian, far and away the most well-versed of us all on all things airlines. You also have some good company in some of our other participants, who themselves are quite knowledgeable in their own right.

The original set of 70 questions I came up with were designed to challenge the average person who had an interest in airlines and may have been around during the 60s and 70s. Clearly however, many of our participants are far more knowledgeable than I anticipated coming off a site such as FlyerTalk as opposed to Airliners.net or some other airline forum site.

My primary concern is that given my level of interest in and knowledge of the airlines, I suspect that at this stage my questions might be a bit too simplistic for you all. While simple questions may be fun at first, ultimately they tend to become tedious to the point of people losing interest.

I have no qualms with the fact that my only slightly better than average knowledge of the airlines means that I'll swing and miss with my answers as often as I might connect for a home run (in cricket that would be a 6 run boundary) because we're all having fun here and at the end of the day we might also learn a few new things. However, it's important to keep it interesting, and at this point I suspect yourself and the rest of our participants are better suited to do just that with your questions.

Speaking of which, I rather enjoy your questions dealing with current things like flying the 767 from AMS to what other airport that was below sea level. It encourages a bit of fun research on our part. I actually did find Atyrau with Air Astana but for some reason was unable to come up with a nonstop flight from AMS aboard Air Astana so I moved on. Unfortunately I'm more than a bit lost on old flights and schedules out of London or around Europe, but I do enjoy reading about the answers when they do come out.

They are, for better or worse, (or worse or better as the case may be) two of the premier home run hitters in baseball. Here are their basic bios per Wikipedia:

Barry Bonds
Babe Ruth

Definitely not players you'd want to lob a softball to unless you enjoyed seeing a ball hit farther than it's ever been hit before...

jlemon

Good Morning All from southern Louisiana!

As you probably are all aware, we are currently experiencing the effects of Hurricane Isaac. LFT, BTR and MSY are all closed to commercial air traffic at present and I think GPT and MOB are closed as well. The storm is forecast to pass very close (if not directly over) LFT this evening. We are expecting wind gusts up to 75 mph and perhaps 10-12 inches of rain. The big problem here is the fact that Isaac is moving very slowly, so we will be subject to extended tropical storm force weather conditions, perhaps lasting into tomorrow as well. miniliq, I hope you and your family are doing fine over there in the MSY area! We have prepared the best we can here and my electrical generator & chainsaw are both ready for action. The last time we had a similar storm in LFT was Hurricane Gustav some years ago. Lots of trees down in that storm and no power for several days. Fortunately, I've got a very serviceable IPA iced down in an ice chest so I'm prepared!

Updates to follow and perhaps some new questions as well later today as long as the power holds out!

Cheers and wish us good luck!

Seat 2A

Good luck, jlemon! We recently had an almost unheard of 8" of rain in northwestern Alaska that caused some flooding, but the idea of receiving potentially 20 or more inches of rain is almost unfathomable. I hope you've got more than one IPA in your ice chest! Stay well and dry!

WHBM

..... what, one of these ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_Pale_Ale
Did it make it across the ocean ? That's older British technology than the Viscount !

Sure you'll do well, jlemon. When I was a teenager we lived in a house right on the seafront, facing the Irish Sea in northern England, and we used to get a couple of north-westerly Atlantic storms each winter, and one with these windspeeds maybe every couple of years, though not with the rainfall of your hurricanes. They were interesting to watch from the upstairs windows out over the sea ! We learned long ago in the UK to put power and telephone lines underground.

The BBC weather website has said all day that the windspeed in Lafayette LA is 25 mph from the north, which I suspect is a gross error.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/4330145

miniliq

My wife and I were on one of the last flights out of MSY on Monday evening, after slogging through evacuation traffic on the way to the airport. We took advantage of the evacuation as an excuse to fly to YVR (we tell folks that when we evacuate, we make sure to go beyond the storm's reach!) to attend a nephew's wedding tomorrow, an invitation we had previously declined, at a resort town called Tofino, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Today we're driving the last few miles through beautiful mountain and ocean scenery to surprise everyone, especially those who have been anxiously emailing us about our hurricane status.

It is possible, but wasn't convenient, to fly to Tofino (YAZ). I could pose the question of who flies there and what equipment, but you can google it as well as I can -- suffice it to say it reminds me of some of the Scottish Island airports we've been discussing in previous posts. Small airlines, small equipment, dicey weather.

My son, who lives 5 miles from us on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, has appropriated my emergency generator and chain saw and is hunkering down along with our two grandchildren (one born a week after Katrina). His wife is a nursing supervisor at a very well-equipped and safe New Orleans hospital and "moved in" there Monday for the duration -- she reports that the patient load is way less than during Katrina, and although the winds have been less than Katrina, the slow-moving storm is dumping considerably more rain. Our house is at +22' a few miles north of the Lake, so should not be threatened by rising water -- but we have many pine trees that are within striking distance of the house, so we'll have to see how that goes.

jlemon, we'll say prayers for you and your family as well as ours! We'll probably take a few days to drive to YYC and fly home from there unless we need to rush back to begin repairs.

Wally Bird

Lots of Citations and Lears

jlemon

Thanks Seat 2A! And please know the IPA supply is holding up nicely!

jlemon

Yes, indeed, sir! Although it is an American rendition of an India Pale Ale from a certain microbrewery located not too far north of the Golden Gate bridge in northern California!

And please know our wind gusts are presently quite a bit higher than 25 mph!

miniliq

Right on Wally Bird -- most of the wedding party arrived on a Citation CJ3. With the morning fog and overcast, they had a 20 minute window to get in.
There is, however, one scheduled airline, Orca Airways, that provides daily service (and up to four times daily in the summer) from YVR using a Piper PA-31 Navajo.