jrl767

35– Allegheny had some BAC 1-11 service at HVN, but I’m pretty sure they only operated Convair 580s there at this time

iirc the only other jet operator was Eastern, with both 727 and D9S service to Washington National/DCA … a one-stopper to ORD would have more likely been a 727, with the stop perhaps at Louisville/SDF

Seat 2A

WHBM

My goodness, that was posted as a JOKE !

Nowadays this alternative way round would be obvious - Emirates, Etihad or Qatar, all of whom could do a daily one-stop (for Emirates, possibly more than once a day and on A380s). But 30 years ago they were all mere pimples. However the focus then in the Mid-East was more Saudi, they had more service from London Heathrow then than now, and if you know the Middle East a lot of the immigrant labour comes from certain countries only, Philippines, and Korea, being key ones. So worth a shot. I'm surprised that JFK was only once a week.

Now I wonder if our mythical traveller would have enjoyed life on board. Absolutely no alcohol served. JFK to Jeddah would be oil industry staff and other exporters. Jeddah to Manila, I'm afraid to say, would be 300-plus Filipino labourers returning home back in economy. Let's hope we are at least up in F.

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WHBM

Possibly they also had flights to Riyadh, or Dhahran, then continuing to other points. Saudia was long like this at London Heathrow, three or more departures in a day sometimes, but various destinations, some stopping intermediately, different times on different days, different flight numbers, etc, all to no particular pattern. Even their mainstream domestic flights, multiple widebodies per day, seemed to have completely different patterns each day of the week.

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Given that Seattle is not involved I presume it's a long Alaskan flight down The Aleutians, from Anchorage. I'm embarrassed to make a faux-pas with our illustrious Alaskan resident. Didn't Northwest used to make a refuelling stop at Adak in the 1950s, halfway from Anchorage to Tokyo ? Is there really a "city" down there ?

There used to be a wonderful video on YouTube, now seemingly gone, of a flight in a Reeve Electra, including a view of the approach into the gravel strip at, I believe, Port Heiden, real barren Alaska, that let me recall my own one trip to Anchorage.

Meanwhile we are into a notable holiday week here in the UK, 70 years anniversary of The Queen, which started very much with an aircraft connection, being downroute in Africa when King George VI unexpectedly died rin 1952, and a great aviation effort was made to return instantly - which I think I made some questions about on a previous anniversary. In fact at their departure on the trip The King had come along to "see them off", not a normal issue but he was a notable flyer himself, active pilot in WW1, in the 1930s owned a personal Airspeed Envoy twin (think Beech 18), and came and had a good inspection with the crew of the BOAC Canadair C-4 Argonaut which was chartered for the trip, including an extended ramp walkaround in the bitter February weather at Heathrow, which is said to be what was the cause of it all a few days later. Aviation here has never forgotten this, thereafter whenever bad weather is in hand a whole hangar is cleared out and the Royal aircraft is taxied in there for transfer to a car alongside.

For us (quite off topic), it's a school holiday week, and as Little Miss WHBM progressively develops on the piano, a treat yesterday was to go to Central London by the new high speed Crossrail train and go to the piano shop and "have a go" on some of the better ones there (we have started off with the cheapest model they do). It's the Yamaha music shop, in Soho, at the heart of London's (Europe's) music and movie commercial centre. See here : 160 Wardour St - Google Maps

The pianos are behind those seven ground floor windows, so they have quite a collection, and the staff are very pleasant and tolerant. After about 5 minutes of us playing inside there, notice in the link that at the front door if you zoom in there is also a white grand piano just inside. A disreputable hobo came up the steps and started hammering up and down on the keys. Assistant calls to her manager, who has heard it anyway, strides out and promptly ejects him back out into the street. Little Miss W is transfixed, never having seen any such event like this before. In relating the day's events to others in the evening, it ("there was a naughty man") was obviously the highlight of the trip !

Gardyloo

RAA flew SEA-Cold Bay/CDB, but I think they didn't start that (brief) service until later than 1973 (thinking 1977 or so.) So I'll guess it was nonstop service to The Rock, ANC-Shemya/SYA. It's also possible that there was a nonstop sector from Attu to ANC but I thought that was an extension on the SYA or Adak runs. So I'll stick with Shemya. BTW, Shemya is in the eastern hemisphere, so "North America" ...?

(Bonus semi-related question) - in 1971 you're flying on an all-jet (B727) route from Seattle to one of the Aleutian Islands. Name the charter carrier, the client, and the route.

jrl767

34-

• I started out trying to make this work with Eastern; came up with a feasible routing for a 72S or a 757 (DCA-Florida-ATL-PHX-LAS), but MIA/PBI/FLL/MCO/TPA-ATL seems too short for lunch service
• Western was still around in the first part of the year; again, there's a feasible 72S routing (DCA-MSP-SLC-LAX-LAS), but there's no way SLC-LAX would have featured dinner
• TW only had the STL hub, CO wasn't yet serving DCA, NW route system could accommodate with a D9S but would been too convoluted (DCA-DTW-MSP-MEM-PHX-LAS), ditto for UA with a 72S (DCA-ORD-XXX-DEN-SFO-LAS)

I think this falls into the "wild guess" category: American MD-80, running DCA-ORD-IAH-DFW-PHX-LAS

jlemon

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I wonder if this may have had something to do with oil exploration in the Bering Sea back at that time. I seem to recall that Era Helicopters was operating contract service down in the Aleutians with a Boeing Vertol BV-234 with this large rotorcraft having been leased from Columbia Helicopters. This was one of the very few times the BV-234 had been used for passenger transport in the U.S. (another notable use was scheduled passenger BV-234 service into Atlantic City operated by the Trump organization).

So with that, I'll guess Alaska Airlines operating contract 727 passenger service for Shell (formerly Royal Dutch Shell) from Seattle into Dutch Harbor.

Gardyloo

Right airline, wrong route, wrong contractor. DUT couldn't handle 727s in the early '70s (nor could it handle the Electra) thus Reeve served it with their YS-11s. You're right, however, regarding subsurface work being the object of the exercise.

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jrl767

34- well, the MadDog means it must have been JetAmerica, which means the first two stops were MSP and SEA ... Portland and Long Beach for the others

jlemon

Ah, sounds like the runway at Dutch was even shorter back then. I think it's still only 4,500 feet in length these days.....which must have made life interesting at times for Boeing 737 combi flight crews back when DUT had jet service.

So let's move up the chain a bit and have that 727 charter service land at Cold Bay....although I haven't a clue concerning the company Alaska Airlines was operating for. Might have been another oil & gas company that was conducting offshore exploratory drilling in the area....or perhaps it was actually a mining outfit.

WHBM

These Aleutian points are not too far south of Anadyr, top of Kamchatka, Russian Far East, which in those times had a daily Ilyushin 62 to Moscow, and a few per week to Leningrad (now St Petersburg), the latter certainly sometimes transiting the North Pole en route. More recently it is an Aeroflot 777-300ER. The airport is the typical late-Soviet style, with sloping windows. I suspect somewhat more than any of the Aleutian points have got

Ugolny Airport (airports-worldwide.com)

Did Reeve ever run flights with the Electra, scheduled or charter, to the Soviet Union ?