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Old Timer's Airline Quiz and Discussion.

Old Timer's Airline Quiz and Discussion.

Old Jul 25, 2022, 7:09 am
  #26161  
 
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Air Inter long had an interesting little scissors hub at Lyon, with twice-daily flights meeting up from the full set of French provincial cities, enabling trips like Bordeaux to Strasbourg, or Marseilles to Lille, without going through Paris, although that was another option. Some were on smaller aircraft like the Nord 262, which was almost built just for this task. All lost nowadays. Some of the aircraft just seemed to do a morning and evening round trip there, standing idle for the rest of the day as worthwhile business was just not there. It worked very well, if your schedule fitted with theirs.

Interestingly, this mirrored a long tradition of the French railways, which had major long distance services radiating from Paris just a couple of times a day, sometimes even just one daytime and one overnight train, each huge trains of say 15 cars or more, and at busy times duplicated by another running just behind - then nothing for the rest of the day. It's somewhat changed now, but I was at the Paris Gare de Lyon a few years ago one summer weekend afternoon (ironically, given @jlemon 's notes above, it was the day of the end of the Tour de France just along the street), and one of the TGV trains arrived from the Riviera, double deck trains, and two joined together, full up and well over 1,000 passengers getting out. Five minutes later a duplicate, also two double deckers joined, arrived from the same place, with another 1,500 or so passengers. The pandemoneum for the next half hour at the Metro entrance and the taxi stand was something to see. Only in France !

You see, it's still like the all-time classic French holiday film "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday", from about 1950. I was reminded of this film multiple times in our Jersey sojourn. Have a look at the complete film if you can. Here's the opening shot (2 minutes) at the railway station. I understand that Paris Orly airport on summer Saturday mornings, with Air France and Easyjet to the South of France, is still much the same :

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Last edited by WHBM; Jul 25, 2022 at 7:18 am
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Old Jul 25, 2022, 8:41 am
  #26162  
 
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re Sterling AW, Caravelles, Pastor Krogager and the early posts in this Thread - do you have a link please to them - I had a trawl up to Page 108!

thanks
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Old Jul 25, 2022, 8:45 am
  #26163  
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Originally Posted by WHBM
You see, it's still like the all-time classic French holiday film "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday", from about 1950. I was reminded of this film multiple times in our Jersey sojourn. Have a look at the complete film if you can. Here's the opening shot (2 minutes) at the railway station. I understand that Paris Orly airport on summer Saturday mornings, with Air France and Easyjet to the South of France, is still much the same :
Possibly the funniest film ever made.
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Old Jul 25, 2022, 10:26 am
  #26164  
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Originally Posted by WHBM

Interestingly, this mirrored a long tradition of the French railways, which had major long distance services radiating from Paris just a couple of times a day, sometimes even just one daytime and one overnight train, each huge trains of say 15 cars or more, and at busy times duplicated by another running just behind - then nothing for the rest of the day. It's somewhat changed now, but I was at the Paris Gare de Lyon a few years ago one summer weekend afternoon (ironically, given @jlemon 's notes above, it was the day of the end of the Tour de France just along the street), and one of the TGV trains arrived from the Riviera, double deck trains, and two joined together, full up and well over 1,000 passengers getting out. Five minutes later a duplicate, also two double deckers joined, arrived from the same place, with another 1,500 or so passengers. The pandemoneum for the next half hour at the Metro entrance and the taxi stand was something to see. Only in France !

You see, it's still like the all-time classic French holiday film "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday", from about 1950. I was reminded of this film multiple times in our Jersey sojourn. Have a look at the complete film if you can. Here's the opening shot (2 minutes) at the railway station. I understand that Paris Orly airport on summer Saturday mornings, with Air France and Easyjet to the South of France, is still much the same
Great to see these steam powered locomotives in action. A rare sight these days. And speaking of which.....

Union Pacific will display their "Big Boy" steam locomotive number 4014 in Denver this Friday, July 29. And then on this Saturday, July 30, UP's "Big Boy" will operate a special service transporting passengers from Denver to Cheyenne.

Here are the details....

https://www.up.com/heritage/steam/schedule/index.htm

According to Union Pacific, engine number 4014 is the largest steam locomotive in the world still in operation.....

https://www.up.com/heritage/steam/4014/

Note the comparison of the "Big Boy" with a Boeing 747 in the above link.....
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Last edited by jlemon; Jul 25, 2022 at 12:17 pm
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Old Jul 25, 2022, 12:07 pm
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Originally Posted by rog747
re Sterling AW, Caravelles, Pastor Krogager and the early posts in this Thread - do you have a link please to them - I had a trawl up to Page 108!

thanks
Hello @rog747, how was your trip on BA CityFlyer, which we allow out on weekends away from London City, for them to do a little exploration

If you do a Search This Thread, towards the top, Advanced, and put in keyword Sterling, I think you will get all the references there have been here over time to them. Don't think it brings up any other usage.

Sterling was always portrayed as Krogager's venture, but the name actually came from his initial equal business partner, called Sterling (Strling in Danish).
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Old Jul 26, 2022, 10:48 am
  #26166  
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We've discussed Cayman Airways on a number of occasions in the past (and yours truly flew with them several times back in the day- it was always an enjoyable experience)....

So I thought I'd share the news that Cayman Airways will commence weekly nonstop service between Grand Cayman (GCM) and Los Angeles (LAX) this November. This will be the first time KX has ever operated scheduled service to California and it appears the equipment will be a 737-8 MAX.

And with this post, I've now reached the magic number of 10,000 here on FT.....
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Old Jul 27, 2022, 12:40 pm
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Originally Posted by Gardyloo
Possibly the funniest film ever made.
If you haven't seen this before, but know the film, here's a 1 hour BBC2 TV programme made in 1975 interviewing Jacques Tati just a few years before his death, shot extensively right where they filmed M Hulot's Holiday. A very well put together programme, of the style BBC2 don't get to do any more. They did comparable ones of Fellini, Truffaut, etc, a whole range of European film directors.


The host, Gavin Millar, BBC presenter of the era, from Glasgow, himself died just a couple of months ago. I briefly met him during my time in Edinburgh, right when this program was made.

Excused for being in this thread by, firstly, shots of a Sikorsky S-51 helicopter in US Air Mail service, and secondly some very contemporary, for their time, 1975 shots of the brand new Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, with its iconic and bizarre architecture, and that haunting PA opening jingle the airport used. A passing Caravelle even gets a very brief moment to itself - but you will have to watch it all through to catch them.
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Last edited by WHBM; Jul 27, 2022 at 1:42 pm
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Old Jul 28, 2022, 7:44 pm
  #26168  
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Greetings, all. I'm a close follower of this thread, but rarely post because most of the questions are out of my league.

Today, I want to focus on People Express. The following questions are presumably easy to find via the internet, but please try to answer them without help from google/Wikipedia. I've also crafted them to be subjective, so they might not have "right" answers.

1. Do you regard PE as the first LCC? If not, what others come to mind?
2. What was unusual about their ticketing process?
3. What was their flagship route?
4. Which airline absorbed them in the end and how did this deal affect the acquiring party in particular and the airline industry in general?
5. If you flew PE from BOS to LAX in 1983, where would you connect (obvious) and what were the two airplane types?
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Old Jul 29, 2022, 2:04 am
  #26169  
 
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Originally Posted by moondog
5. If you flew PE from BOS to LAX in 1983, where would you connect (obvious) and what were the two airplane types?
Connect at Newark EWR.
BOS-EWR on a 737-100
EWR-LAX on a 747-100/200
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Old Jul 29, 2022, 2:40 am
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Originally Posted by moondog

1. Do you regard PE as the first LCC? If not, what others come to mind?
No, there's a long history of 'alternative' carriers rising to compete with the 'establishment' ones. Here in the UK, in the early 1930s, government-supported Imperial Airways did classic high fare, well-catered mainstream routes like London to Paris, when along came independent Hillman Airways, who ran cheap, no catering flights from a rough airfield at London (where, incidentally, nowadays G-WHBM lives), also to Paris, with De Havilland Dragon aircraft.

Hillman's Airways - Wikipedia

I'll just make the point that when several such airlines merged up to form 'British Airways' in the later 1930s, it was not the current BA, but an independent company. The mainstream airline of the times was called Imperial Airways.

In the USA I suppose one of the best known examples was Pacific Southwest, known as PSA, who built up a substantial cheaper-fare operation within California, from decidedly cheap fare, old DC-4 aircraft beginnings in the late 1950s. What typically happens is such carriers start off competing on price, having little of the substantial business overhead of a mainstream Network carrier, and where successful the latter may reduce their fares to minimise loss of business, while the successful upstart finds they can increase fares a bit to improve their margins, and thus the fares after a while tend to converge.
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Last edited by WHBM; Jul 29, 2022 at 4:17 am
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Old Jul 29, 2022, 7:56 am
  #26171  
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Originally Posted by moondog
Greetings, all. I'm a close follower of this thread, but rarely post because most of the questions are out of my league.

Today, I want to focus on People Express. The following questions are presumably easy to find via the internet, but please try to answer them without help from google/Wikipedia. I've also crafted them to be subjective, so they might not have "right" answers.

1. Do you regard PE as the first LCC? If not, what others come to mind?
2. What was unusual about their ticketing process?
1- WHBM unsurprisingly provided a far better and far more complete description of PSA than I could have done
2- I believe it started out "make a reservation, pay on board" ... not sure how long that paradigm survived, and I don't remember what scenario applied to my one trip with them (EWR-BAL, 737-100 N416PE in June 1983)
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Old Jul 29, 2022, 11:13 am
  #26172  
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Originally Posted by KT550
Connect at Newark EWR.
BOS-EWR on a 737-100
EWR-LAX on a 747-100/200
That's my recollection too. TMK, their small fleet consisted only of first-generation 737s and 747s, and the former couldn't even pull off EWR-DEN, let alone transcons.
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Old Jul 29, 2022, 11:19 am
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Originally Posted by moondog
That's my recollection too. TMK, their small fleet consisted only of first-generation 737s and 747s, and the former couldn't even pull off EWR-DEN, let alone transcons.
Lots of 727-200s as well but I don't believe they would make LAX non stop.
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Old Jul 29, 2022, 11:24 am
  #26174  
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Originally Posted by jrl767
1- WHBM unsurprisingly provided a far better and far more complete description of PSA than I could have done
I completely forgot about PSA (I was an east coast kid) and hadn't even heard of the 1930s British airline until I read his post.

2- I believe it started out "make a reservation, pay on board" ... not sure how long that paradigm survived, and I don't remember what scenario applied to my one trip with them (EWR-BAL, 737-100 N416PE in June 1983)
My mom and I started flying them from BOS to PIT (via EWR, of course) shortly after their launch because they were A LOT cheaper than USAir (maybe still Allegheny at the time). Based on my memory (bearing in mind I was only around 7), the flight attendants walked down the aisle and collected cash from customers after boarding. I don't think they had credit card processing equipment of any kind, though maybe I didn't notice. This drill wasn't as time-consuming as you might imagine because passengers were well trained, often with exact change. However, I'm guessing there must have been incidents of, "Oh, sorry. I only brought $20. Can I mail you a check for the extra $2?"

In any event, the pay on board policy definitely disappeared before the airline died, maybe only 2 years after launch?
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Old Jul 29, 2022, 2:08 pm
  #26175  
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Originally Posted by moondog
Greetings, all. I'm a close follower of this thread, but rarely post because most of the questions are out of my league.

Today, I want to focus on People Express. The following questions are presumably easy to find via the internet, but please try to answer them without help from google/Wikipedia. I've also crafted them to be subjective, so they might not have "right" answers.

3. What was their flagship route?

4. Which airline absorbed them in the end and how did this deal affect the acquiring party in particular and the airline industry in general?
Many thanks to moondog for stepping up to the plate with these great quiz questions!

3. I believe this was New York Newark - London Gatwick operated with a 747.

4. It was Continental. And the CO - PE merger resulted in Continental once again operating 747 equipment as well as CO operating a hub at Newark.
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