Indelaware

These I am sure of:

OMA-EWR, Midwest Express, DC9

OMA-MDW-CLE-LGA, Continental, D9S
OMA-MCI-EWR, Continental, MD80

These, I am guessing:
OMA-ORD-SWF, American, 727-200
OMA-STL-ISP, TWA, MD80

Could have been someone flying OMA-XXX-HPN as well.

jlemon

And this quiz item remains partially answered.....and, once again, the remaining air carrier in question operated a twin engine aircraft.

Meantime, my lady and I have just returned from a business trip to New Orleans where the weather was quite nice and the food and wine were even better. Joined by old friends who live in the area, we once again visited Drago's for their exceptional flame broiled oysters with garlic butter sauce complimented by freshly baked, hot French bread plus several superb entrees as well. The wine? A wonderful meritage followed by a very nice merlot. We walked from our hotel on a Canal St. to the restaurant but then following dinner accepted a ride back to our lodging with our friends in their brand new Range Rover which I found to be a very impressive vehicle.

And we arrived home this afternoon just in time as a vigorous low pressure storm system is now affecting the region with rain, gusty winds and chilly air temps. Hmmm......what's that from our TV weather guru on the local evening news? A chance of snow flurries here tomorrow night? Thank goodness I replenished our oak firewood supply last weekend via the use of my trusty chainsaw!

jlemon

Midwest Express (YX) is correct! I believe Midwest Express operated both the DC9-14 and DC9-15. Seating was business class-style: 2-2 configuration with 60 seats total. I never had the opportunity to fly on YX operated DC9 equipment but did have the pleasure of flying on board their MD-80 aircraft (featuring 2-2 biz class-style seating as well) on their SFO-MKE and LAX-MKE nonstop routes. And BTW, in addition to the nonstop flight, Midwest Express was also operating a pair of one stop flights from EWR to OMA with the DC9, both via MKE, of course.

Now about those other five airlines: what we are looking for here is the one stop service operated from the New York City area to Omaha. So with that in mind, I've made some comments above concerning your additional answers.

Meantime, our latest winter storm continues to develop nicely here with heavy rain and winds gusting in excess of 40 mph in the area....and we are now experiencing some lightning and thunder. Glad I'm not on board an RJ attempting to land at LFT!

Seat 2A

It's a snowy afternoon here in Anchor Town - visibility looks to be no more than about 400 yards. Out my window are parked three Cathay Pacific 747-400Fs along with local companies Northern Air Cargo (737-300) and Everts Air Cargo (DC-6) and hey! There's a FedEx MD-11 out there in the fog!

Anyway, to the unanswered questions:

11. Two airlines offered nonstop service between the U.S. and Mexico with the Convair 580. Identify both airlines and the single international route each served.

As indicated by Indelaware, one of them was Resort Air Commuter flying between San Diego and Loreto, La Paz and San Jose del Cabo.

The other was Laredo Air, flying San Antonio --> Laredo --> Monterrey.

B-001: In late 1988, identify the only airline to operate 737-200s between SAN and LAX with six daily departures - all of them 73S equipment.
HINT: It's one of this country's oldest airlines that started serving the SAN-LAX route after deregulation.

That airline would be Pan Am.

Thanks to everyone for their participation. And now, I'm off into the grey yonder beyond Anchorage. Tomorrow at this time it'll be sunny and 70 degrees down in the City of Angels. Happy travels, all!

MADPhil

We used to make good use of the MKE-SFO flight. Drive over the night before, stay-park-fly at one of the nearby hotels, and a hearty Serbian dinner at the Old Town (we got two more meals for us and friends out of one spinach pie). A good breakfast with champagne outbound and a nice lunch on the return trip. It's a pity that that business model didn't work out.

WHBM

A moot point, if they did it would have been just around this time 1988-89, when Wardair started making the transition of their longstanding charter flights to schedules, shortly before they were taken over; this latter in no small part because their new schedules from Canada to London made them much more valuable. For US flights from Vancouver and Calgary they ran typically down to Las Vegas, LAX (with many package tours to Disneyland) and Phoenix, while from Toronto it was St Petersburg and Fort Lauderdale, obviously mostly wintertime destinations.

Good old Wardair. WHBM's aunt left Britain in the early 1950s to take charge of nursing at the main mine hospital in Rhodesia, Africa, met and married a Canadian mining engineer there, and thereby ended up in a wonderful mountainside home in West Vancouver, BC, with spectacular views across to Vancouver Island, or the other direction to the 11,000 foot Mount Baker in Washington State. Of course this became THE holiday destination of choice for all the rest of the family from Britain, that was when they weren't coming in the other direction. Initially they used Canadian Pacific early DC-8s (maybe even Britannias) from Vancouver to Amsterdam, and we used to go and meet the connecting KLM flight at Heathrow, doubtless my first ever sight of an Electra. In 1963 Max Ward, Wardair's founder, bought a redundant DC-6B from CP, and started charter flights from Vancouver to London, and they came over that year on one of the first. They were particularly impressed by the standards of service on board, and as Wardair was offering stocks at the time, my uncle bought some, feeling such an operation would do well. Over time, with various rights issues etc, he built up a nice little portfolio.

My own first trip with them, first transatlantic flight, was on their 727, Prestwick-Sondrestrom (Greenland)-Vancouver, and we went back the next year on their new nonstop 707, and various other flights over time when the 747s took over. Their service standard would be seen as First Class nowadays, the cocktails, substantial steak dinners, and after all that was done they played Bingo down the cabin. That first trip my mother declined the Bingo cards handed out, with that sort of "nothing so low class" look that only mothers can have. This attitude changed very soon when she saw the prizes being handed out to winners, substantial liquors or perfumes off the duty-free cart ! Wardair built up a very substantial share of the UK-Canada market with Advanced Booking Charters, effectively scheduled flights you could buy in any travel agency, but they pretty much cut back each winter when the Vancouver fleet was operated across to Hawaii or down to California, Nevada or Mexico. They also operated flights to Canada from many provincial airports in Britain which otherwise never saw an aircraft as large; I don't believe anyone else ever scheduled 747s at Leeds/Bradford.

I think our last family trip was when I delivered my mother to Gatwick en route to Vancouver early in 1989, by which time it was a scheduled A310 operation, although still bought in the same way, and she and her sister then hopped on to Hawaii for a week, Wardair as well of course. Shortly afterwards my uncle received a telephone call at home from a very pleasant lawyer in Calgary; would he be prepared to sell his shares at a notable premium. It was of course apparent to him that a takeover was in prospect. A Vancouver lawyer was at the house within the hour, with all the paperwork prepared, and that was the end of our longstanding family association with Wardair, along with everyone else's

I believe that long-retired Max Ward is still with us, and indeed still has his own aircraft. He was not only a pioneer flyer up in the north country, where Wardair had a separate division based at Yellowknife NWT with bush aircraft, but had also been an RCAF flying instructor in WW2 for the many RAF pilots sent over to Canada for training.

JoeDTW

Looking at the flight schedule for NA's SFO-ATL flights, I think it would have required two 727-35s to fly, because it can't be flown as an ATL turn around...and when Saturday's SFO-ATL flight arrived, the aircraft would have needed to be ferried to another city. What was Mr. Maytag thinking?

NA did operate DC-8s on this route at one time. George Cearley's amazing history of ATL has pictures of them on the ground there. However, I can't imagine NA carried enough passengers on their flights to fill a Lockheed Lodestar, let alone a DC-8, so the flight switched pretty quickly to 727s.

MADPhil

My wife made good use of Wardair in the 1970s when we had a commuting marriage between Eugene, OR and Europe. She was greatly impressed by the service, but I don't think she played Bingo. One trip with an entire rugby team on board was quite lively!

jlemon

This thought occurred to me as well in light of the National ATL-SFO schedule provided by Seat 2A. I would be very surprised if the equipment simply stayed on the ground at Atlanta and was not instead ferried empty in a non revenue operation to and from a nearby NA station (JAX? TPA? MCO? MSY?) before and after the ATL-SFO flight twice a week....

jlemon

Not too long ago I saw an RCAF A310 preparing for departure from the Atlantic Aviation FBO at New Orleans International (MSY). The aircraft was supporting several RCAF F/A-18 "Hornet" fighters (I'm not sure what RCAF actually calls these fighters...CF-18?) which were also sitting on the ramp at the FBO adjacent to the A310. We had just arrived there via helicopter. I asked one of the RCAF personnel if the A310 had been previously operated by Wardair. He said he thought so but wasn't quite sure. BTW, he also said the RCAF fighter aircraft had been participating with our military (USAF/Louisiana Air National Guard F-15 "Eagle" and USN F/A-18 "Hornet" fighters) in an exercise over the Gulf of Mexico.....

Seat 2A

Sitting here on a beautiful morning in the Sky Club at SAN, I don't have the schedules with me. If I were to look however, I suspect I might find similar frequency 727 flights coming to/from SFO from LAS and/or IAH.

So who else is traveling of late? JL and Kate are off to the Caribbean soon, jrl767 is LA bound tonight, and it wouldn't surprise me if WHBM has an upcoming date on a Citijet BAe-146 in the not so distant future. Anyone else hittin' the road?

jrl767

the Canadian Forces ("RCAF" disappeared from the lexicon many years ago, but it still sounds cool) Hornet is indeed called the CF-18

jlemon

Hmmmm....well, it would appear they are still known as the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF):

www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca

jrl767

well I obviously should have put "I think ... " at the front of that parenthetical ...

WHBM

All five of the RCAF A310s were new to Wardair. Canadian Airlines inherited them in the acquisition, then withdrew the fleet but was unable to find any meaningful purchaser for them beyond some short-term leasing. The Wardair financing must have had no break clause. They actually stood on the ground unused for a year or two until someone at Canadian Airlines managed to persuade the Canadian government to pick them up for the RCAF. One of them has a VIP interior. Anytime the Royal Family (the Queen of the UK is also the Queen of Canada) makes an official visit over there, it is sent over to London to pick them up, and when it appears on the evening television news, all immaculately polished, I wonder if it is the same one that I saw depart Gatwick that 1989 afternoon, the last Wardair aircraft I ever saw get airborne.

Canadian Airlines paid way too much for what Wardair was worth, all with borrowed money, and paying it back was a recurring nightmare. They went through multiple restructurings in the 1990s until the debtors owned most of it, occupying all the management time, yet they were out of cash and effectively bankrupt by 2000. The privatised Air Canada, seeing their chance to get rid of their big competitor ahead of any other purchaser (principally an American Airlines-backed consortium), offered sufficient to buy the worthless entity out that the creditors pressurised the government to allow it. Again it was far too much for what it was worth, and burdened by this debt again, Air Canada themselves had to file for bankruptcy in 2003.

The last time I saw my uncle was shortly afterwards, him now a very elderly but still financially astute and courteous gentleman. I put it to him that if he hadn't sold those little stockholdings, three of Canada's most prominent airlines, including the national flag carrier, would not have gone to the wall in chain-reaction. He saw where the suggestion was going as I developed it, of course. He looked down on the chess game between us that he loved to get out each evening on the infrequent occasions that I visited, sipped on his old-African style cocktail, brandy and soda (made with his favourite Napoleon brandy that had miraculously turned up from Heathrow duty free, once again, a couple of days earlier), looked out across the lights of Vancouver spread below the house, and just smiled. "Um .... bishop to knight 5, and I ... um ... think that will be it within six moves". And it was.