WHBM

We have a couple of airworthy B-17s over here in the UK as well, inevitably at Duxford (plus a third one in the museum there). About every couple of years, it seems, I hear the approaching hammering of four radials, slam out into the garden, and one flies over the house at 1,500 feet, VFR, using the London City VOR radio for navigation. I'm sure every level of management is up in the tower there with their binoculars. Here's the two about to display at Duxford a couple of years ago.

jrl767

I have a couple of Asia questions ready to go, but I’d like to learn about our guesses on those that our new colleague rt23456p posed last week

hint: think about 747s of various models sporting the colors of 20+ airlines

jrl767

I don’t actually know the answer to this, but I’m pretty sure she had a starring movie role, being cast as the “mother ship” that carried Chuck Yeager’s X-1A in “The Right Stuff”

moondog

The final (we think) episode of this show airs tonight at 9p, but Fifi (yes, they named it this) debuted six years ago during season 1.

travelinmanS

Sounds like it'll be a question about Orient Thai!

YVR Cockroach

Bit vague but all I can think of is the prototype/test a/c that sports the logos of launch customers.

moondog

Here are several questions about a fictional airline that is featured in two popular (connected) TV shows.

1. What is the name of this airline?
2. What was the BIG incident?

Seat 2A

I have 40 questions ready to go. Now I just need a reliable laptop. I have a new one on order that should be here by the end of the month. I may be able to get by with the one I have but 12 hour days at present preclude timely responses. That said, you all are getting along just fine without me - something that should carry on quite nicely for a while longer, possibly a good while longer. Glad to see the ongoing repartee between everyone. Great posts, gang! Happy contrails!

joejones

I assume you're talking about Wayfarer, the airline that has a mid-air collision in Breaking Bad and is flown by the titular character in the last episode of Better Call Saul. (Which is also the show that "Fifi" appears in, as the backdrop for a commercial.)

Now a *real* fan question would be to identify all of the routes used by Werner Ziegler's crew when they leave the US, and which ones were historically accurate at the time the episode was set.

I signed up for AMC+ to catch the last season of BCS and was pleased to find that they also carry Pan Am, which is a fun little series to watch for the kind of people who follow this thread.

moondog

All of Werner's guys were flying from airports within 1000 miles of ABQ to various places in Germany, and none took the same flights. I don't recall the exact flights, but none of them struck me as implausible.

However, in the finale, Saul asked his lawyer friend to fly from ABQ to OMA, and said he needed to connect in Houston. He might have been referring to Wayfarer only because he was loyal to them (and, we'll never know about this fictional airline's route network), but I can think of 3+ faster ways to pull off this trip today, and I'm pretty sure these were in place when episode 13 took place (2016?). What routings would you have suggested?

joejones

There were four routes for the six guys, each leaving from a different airport, and only one was to Germany. The other three were each to different countries in Europe. Two were nonstops/directs and two had intermediate connections in North America.

I actually thought the same thing watching this episode! Off the top of my head, UA through DEN, AA through DFW, DL through SLC, WN through DAL or DEN.

moondog

I would like to add LAS and PHX to the list, as well.

WHBM

I finally worked out that this is a US TV show, not shown in Britain ... but it made me think of two popular (well, it would be for us lot) British series, probably likewise not making it across the Atlantic, with similar story lines, but quite separate productions. Both concentrated on the actors, their personalities and lifestyles, the lack of money their operations had, and a range of shady characters encountered, as if straight out of a Graham Green novel. The aircraft were incidental, but widely featured.

One was "Buccaneer", 1980, Buccaneer (TV series) - Wikipedia , by the BBC, sort of contemporary for the time, which featured a nascent Bristol Britannia freight operator, Red-Air, operating various grey market cargo charters from Britain around the world. They used a Britannia from Redcoat, a pretty much similar operator of the times, and for economy of production costs had just the port side retitled from Redcoat to Red-Air, left the big "R" on the tail, and took just one single flight as such, with a whole series of air-to-air and ground taxi shots which lasted them for the full series. I wonder if any general viewers noticed we never saw the aircraft's other side.

The other one was "Airline", 1982 Airline (1982 TV series) - Wikipedia , by the competitive commercial ITV company, still at a time when there were just two television stations in Britain, both of whom got huge daily audiences for everything. They surely must have seen the BBC effort and thought they could do better. This was about an immediate post-WW2 charter DC3 operation, Ruskin Air Services, ending up with the Berlin airlift. They made a similar number of shows but were much more ambitious on the aircraft side, bring in major UK DC3 operator of the time Aces High, run by enthusiasts, who did all sorts of trips at the TV producers' expense, and doubtless enjoyed every minute of it.

So there we go. Incidentally, any of the team in California in the next couple of weeks ?

jrl767

indeed, yet more intriguing historical info and insight from Across the Pond

Mrs767 and I will be at the Grand Hyatt SFO the night of Mon 12 Sep … arrive ~1830, depart Tue 13 Sep/0800

moondog

Okay. This is something we certainly could look up (or rewatch the episode in question), it is more fun trying to remember.
-I can only recall two of the origin airports (DEN and PHX), and another one was either IAH or DFW
-Mike made the guys drive to these places
-the PHX guy had to connect in YVR; I think the others might have had nonstops, but DEN-ORD-Europe makes sense
-Berlin is the only German destination that I remember; I'm thinking Zurich was another destination