Seat 2A

jlemon

22. Wild guess time.....

Texas International operating a DC-9-30 on routing of Albuquerque (ABQ) - Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) - Baltimore (BWI) - Hartford (BDL).

BTW, I've only flown into Hartford once and that trip was on board a Business Express Beechcraft 1900C from La Guardia back in the 1980s. I began my trip on a SkyWest Metro III from San Luis Obispo to LAX, connected to a Piedmont B767-200 in F to Charlotte and then connected again to a Piedmont B737-400 in F to La Guardia via a stop in Richmond. A friend was flying for Business Express at the time and I remember attending a Patriots game in Foxborough where we almost froze to death.....

Seat 2A

jlemon

Well, as a matter of fact, I began composing my answer concerning TI before you dropped your rather large and conclusive hint! So I did not read it beforehand.....

jlemon

16. Well, of course, United comes to mind, what with their hub operation at SFO. However, I do not think it was UA at this time.

So, instead, let's go with TWA operating a B727-200.

And as for the other airline, it might have been Republic, say with a DC-9-30, or it may have been Pacific Southwest, perhaps with an MD-80....so I'll guess it was PSA.

Seat 2A

Here are the remaining unanswered questions...


All questions are sourced from a 1982 Pocket Flight Guide


3. Vamanos á Mexico! This airline offers the only nonstop service between Houston and Acapulco via a single daily flight aboard an all-economy class configured airplane. Identify the airline and the aircraft utilized.

13. Three days of baking in Arizona’s extreme heat have you yearning for a hot cup of coffee on a cold rainy day in Washington’s Emerald City. While the PHX-SEA market is served by five airlines offering direct one-stop service, only a single nonstop flight is offered by one of the airlines. Identify the airline and – if you feel up to it – the aircraft utilized on the nonstop PHX-SEA sector. The airline is not WC or RC

14. Continuing on down to Portland, you find that eight airlines offer nonstop flights on the route utilizing aircraft ranging in size from turboprops to widebodies. Only three airlines offer flights aboard all Y class configured aircraft. Identify these three airlines and – if you’re up to it – the aircraft so configured by each airline. I N ..P L A Y QX F27 & WC 727 correct. Still looking for the other airline and aircraft

After this set of questions concludes, there'll be no more questions from me for awhile because in three days I will be departing on a 57000 mile jaunt around the US, visiting everywhere from my old school in New York to friends working in the Everglades to three concerts in Colorado to a dinner in San Antonio followed by a luncheon in Portland (all in the same weekend) to a week driving around the Desert Southwest including a visit to the George S. Patton Museum. Also included will be a 2400 mile train ride between Portland and Milwaukee (with sleeper accommodations) and a three day road trip up into Northern Wisconsin. Oh yeah, I'll also be sampling Amtrak's new Business Class service aboard the Coast Starlight on a round trip between Seattle and Portland. It'll be a busy six weeks.

jrl767

since we have put most of Seat 2A's latest Quiz questions to bed, I think I can safely resurrect a few that I posed last month

Seat 2A

7. From an Aeroflot timetable, summer 1974 -- the cover photo shows a flight attendant, with eyes closed and a slight but very suggestive smile, practically hugging a model of an Aeroflot jet. What type of aircraft is she caressing?

1974... I'm thinking for propaganda purposes she'd have to be hugging a TU-144. Maybe she was excited about a trip to beautiful cosmopolitan Alma-Ata...

jrl767

TU-144 is indeed correct!

jlemon

3. This may well have been Texas International operating a DC-9-30 shortly before all TI services were folded into Continental.

WHBM

Bear with me, there are a couple of old airliner questions at the end …

WHBM indeed here on a balmy evening, with Mrs WHBM , plus Little Miss WHBM (aged 2.75) FINALLY zzzzz,after a scorching cloudless day on the beach (with a decidedly azure sea), and is your temporary Iberian reporter, although Majorca and the islands are halfway across the Mediterranean to Africa. We’re at the eastern end of the island, Alcudia, opposite end to the city of Palma and it’s airport, the latter large enough to grace a major US city. BA brought us here from London City, courtesy of my old friend E190 G-LCYP, which I last enjoyed on a flight from LCY up to Edinburgh and a business meeting last January on a day of snow, following which jlemon gave me advice upthread on what footwear I should use to avoid falling on those icy Edinburgh cobbles. What a contrast to today.

BA at London City has a certain scheduling skill that, as business travel falls off in the summer months on the high frequency routes, rearrangement allows a few holiday destinations to be served for a short while on odd days, keeping the fleet fully stretched, Palma being one of the key ones, and certainly our flight was all seats taken, including a sizeable Club section. Someone wrote that it seems to be the same passengers on the LCY holiday flights as on the business trips from there for the rest of the year, and that looked plausible.

So a pleasant BA flight, together with the ubiquitous LCY early morning hot breakfast; it was actually less than 2 hours runway to runway, and as Palma was on Westerlies we did indeed approach on 24R.There are hangars to the left of the runway, and then suddenly, for an absolute fleeting moment, there it was, the old Convair 990 in the distance, end on. https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgu...FcRbFAod2y0Crg Onetime N5618 with American in the 1960s, it was sold to MEA, and then on to Spantax, part of their large fleet which ran holiday flights from Spain up to Northern Europe. Last service was in March 1987, and I believe it was the last commercial flight ever operated by a Convair jetliner. It’s been here for the last quarter-century and more, untouched and now very notably weather-stained as you see. Those behind it’s retention should have anticipated this, for despite today’s azure skies, no less than George Bernard Shaw, making a rare appearance in this thread, did of course caution once that :

The Rain in Spain falls Mainly on the Plane.

Sorry.

The Spantax Convairs were part of the European holiday flight revolution that really started in the 1960s, from Britain (first of all), then the rest of northern Europe, down to the Mediterranean. Fares on the likes of BEA in those days were way beyond the reach of most, but the package holiday business got going with holiday flights, ramping up at growth rates of 25% a year and more. At first their cheapness of the flight-transfer-hotel deal led to some notably old piston aircraft with minimal-pitch seats being selected, whose operators often went out of business from year to year, sometimes in the height of August with their travellers stranded in the Mediterranean. There were a number of bad mishaps with this old fleet, ending in the calamitous weekend in June 1967 when on Saturday an Air Ferry DC4 dating from USAF service in WW2 crashed into a mountain approaching Perpignan, on the French/Spanish border, with 88 poor souls packed in tightly (in a DC4 !), and the next day a British Midland Canadair Argonaut, a DC4-clone, crashed on the approaches to Manchester when returning from Palma, from which just a handful managed to be recovered before it was destroyed by fire. Both were due to worn-out aircraft components malfunctioning. Given that the UK holiday airline fleet ran to about 30-40 aircraft at the time, that was it for both the major holiday operators and the UK authorities; the Argonauts were grounded for good within days and in the next couple of years some big investments were made in new One-Elevens (in particular) and 737s.

Palma was always, and continues to be, the No 1 destination for all this activity. The market ever evolves, and from the 1990s onwards Eastern Europe opened up as well, while there has been a great downturn in holiday flights and their operators, replaced by scheduled services. The big European low cost operators are now here in droves, Ryanair and Easyjet both very prominent on our arrival, plus many others. Palma airport is a bit of a disappointment as a gateway, though, having lost what Spanish style it once had; step out at the gate and the first thing you see is a Burger King.

Out here at the other end of the island we still see plenty of aviation action while laying on the beach, up there at high level there are jet trails of much east-west traffic from Rome, Athens, Tel Aviv, etc, to Madrid and Lisbon, and indeed transatlantic traffic. Crossing them north-south are flights from northern Europe to Africa, those to Algiers start their descent around here, while evenings see all the overnight Johannesburg etc flights passing. A couple of nights ago we sat out on our balcony late evening, FlightRadar24 on the laptop in front, while Palma, now on Easterly departures off 06, launched an absolute fusillade of flights off to Germany, Scandinavia, Britain and elsewhere, at a rate that would have done credit to Heathrow, it just went on and on, as the lights of each drew level abeam us at about 10,000 feet the next could be seen starting to show in the distance above the trees.

On the beach, there is much sign of sandcastle building; this will make a change from lawnmower reports. Chief Structural Engineer and General Supervisor, Little Miss WHBM (aged 2.75), Chief Cosmetic Designer, ie where do the little flags go, Mrs WHBM , General Labourer, Wielder of the Bucket and Spade, Heavyweight Digger, etc etc, one WHBM (phew, where’s that beer …). Stand up, stretch, what’s that contrail overhead, ah yes. “Papa, dig …”. Oh well, back to work.

And so, I promised an OTAAQ question or two. Having been accused of recent ones being too easy  …

we’ll have some more “interesting” ones

[1] Palma is the only commercial airport currently here on the island. But right here at Alcudia was once upon a time a notable stopping point for an international service run with 4-engined aircraft. Which airline, and which countries did the route connect ?

[2]. It’s, say, 1970, 45 years ago, and our forebears are making the same trip from London to Palma. What airliners, from which airlines, might they have to choose from ? A real keen type might give which London area airport each operated from.

Seat 2A

I do apologize for the delay in response here. I spent Sunday night and Monday up at Chena Hot Springs - no internet access - and then yesterday driving back down, hurriedly packing and flying down to Seattle. At present I am ensconced in the Pacific Parlour Car tapping out this response while enroute to Portland, OR.

jrl767

3- an all-Y 72S operating IAH-ACA might have worn Mexicana livery

our intrepid historical guru more often than not poses questions with less-than-obvious answers, but I'll stick with MX anyway

Seat 2A

jlemon

3. Ah, that was a wild guess as I was not aware that Texas International ever served ACA, although they did serve a number of other Mexican destinations prior to being merged into Continental.....

And I'm pretty darn sure Mexicana never served IAH although they did serve SAT for many years as well as providing service in later years into DFW.

So perhaps this was actually CO operating a former TI DC9 or D9S that had not yet been reconfigured with an F cabin.....although that's probably wrong, too!