jlemon

Correct! And at least some if not all of these airplanes wound up over at United following its purchase of Pan Am's Pacific division for a mere $750 million back in the mid 80's.

jlemon

9. jrl767 is correct! And WHBM was close!

Here's the sched....

AA 233: New York LaGuardia (LGA) 2:00p - 3:08p Chicago O'Hare (ORD) 3:40p - 5:45p Fort Worth (GSW) 6:10p - 6:33p El Paso (ELP) 7:00p - 7:43p Los Angeles (LAX)
Op: LGA-ORD except Sat., ORD-LAX Daily
Equip: 727 JET
Classes of service: F/Y
Meal service: Snack LGA-ORD, ORD-GSW, GSW-ELP, Dinner ELP-LAX
Note: Special complimentary champagne service for first class passengers GSW-ELP

jlemon

Ah.....quite correct.

WHBM

A huge number. Depends on when in the year you measure it, but summer was when the last new one came, just a few months before the first 747. About 130 I would say.

Bonus question. How many DC8 aircraft was Pan Am operating in 1969 ? And why ? Just two

jlemon

4. Very close! From the the 1979 Pan Am annual report.....

"Ten years ago (in 1969) - when aviation fuel was ten cents a gallon - Pan Am operated 131 707s and was the largest operator of that aircraft type in the world. Now that the average price of fuel is approaching a dollar a gallon, Pan Am expects to be among the first airlines to dispose of its entire fleet of 707s with the sale of its remaining 27 aircraft."

BTW, Pan Am was operating a total of 45 Boeing 747s in 1979 (with the fleet including B747SP and B747 freighter aircraft in addition to 29 B747-100s in pax config) and was the world's largest operator at the time.

Bonus question response: Well, given the fact that Pan Am was operating 131 Boeing 707 aircraft in 1969, I'll guess the number of Douglas DC8 airplanes in their fleet was a very small number - perhaps around five.

As for the why, Pan Am and Delta were operating interchange "through plane" services at this time with the DC8 between the U.S. and Europe. Daily routings included New Orleans - Atlanta - Washington Dulles - London Heathrow - Frankfurt and New Orleans - Washington Dulles - Boston - Paris. And these may well have been the only DC8 services operated by Pan Am at the time.

jlemon

And on a beautiful Sunday morning, here are three more quiz items to round out my most recent mini-set.....

8. It's 1959 and you have just arrived at Dallas Love Field where you will be boarding a turboprop aircraft for a flight to Albuquerque. FIVE intermediate stops will be made en route. Identify the airline, the equipment and all four stops in the order in which they will be made. ANSWERED

9. Now it's 1965 and you are in Houston where you've been attending a symposium at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) concerning the space agency's quest to land men on the moon by the end of the decade. A message is delivered and you are requested to attend a business lunch meeting the next day in New Orleans. A quick check of schedules reveals that three airlines operate morning nonstop service from Houston Hobby to New Orleans with departures at 7:15 am, 7:25 am and 8:00 am. Name all three airlines and the respective aircraft types they operated on these flights. ANSWERED

10. In 1974, this airline was operating intrastate service in California with a turboprop aircraft type. Six destinations were served. Identify the air carrier, the equipment and all six destinations. ANSWERED

jlemon

And last call for the above quiz item. Should there be no takers, I'll provide the answer later today....and now ANSWERED.

Seat 2A

jrl767

sounds like another instance of a Continental Airlines Vickers Viscount ... four stops perhaps Ft Worth, Abilene, Midland/Odessa, and Lubbock

jrl767

let's start by identifying airlines that served GSW ... I can think of AA, BN, CO, and DL; of those, only DL went toward the southeast from Dallas, but I think their Florida service was nonstop

EA had some services between MSY and Florida, so if I add them to the list of GSW operators I would come up with an itinerary via Dallas, New Orleans, and Tampa ... most likely equipment would have been a 727-25

jlemon

Seat 2A is correct! Holiday Airlines (HD) was basically set up with one destination in mind: Lake Tahoe (TVL). It was one of three intrastate air carriers operating in California at the time, the other two being PSA and Air California, of course.

Pacific Air Lines had initiated Fairchild F-27 service into Lake Tahoe back around 1964. This was followed by short lived Boeing 727-100 service which resulted in a jet ban at TVL. Pacific went back to F-27 service and this was continued by successors Air West and Hughes Airwest until about 1972. At that time, RW was only flying five days a week nonstop between SFO and TVL with the F-27.

And so, Holiday saw a niche market and got around the Lake Tahoe Airport jet ban by operating the Electra. Nonstop flights included TVL-LAX, TVL-BUR, TVL-OAK and TVL-SJC back in 1974. Holiday did provide some other point-to-point service such as SJC-LAX, SJC-BUR, LAX-SAN and even LAX-BUR and OAK-SJC; however, in some cases these flights (which were extensions of service into and out of Lake Tahoe) only operated once or twice a week. I recall seeing Holiday operated Electra aircraft at BUR.

Holiday finally went out of business with the result that PSA and Air California both began operating Electra service into Lake Tahoe. In fact, both carriers continued to operate the Electra in order to provide TVL service long after other airlines had retired their Electras. I also remember seeing Air California L-188 aircraft departing OAK for Lake Tahoe.

The jet ban was finally lifted at TVL and AirCal initiated MD-80 flights followed by B737-300 service. And when American acquired AirCal, AA continued to operate B737-300 flights into TVL for a time with former AirCal airplanes. My one and and only journey by jet into and out of TVL was on board American operated B737-300 aircraft SFO-TVL round trip. Several other airlines attempted to operate jet service into Lake Tahoe, including Reno Air with MD-80s, Allegiant with the DC9s and Tahoe Air with B737-200s. These days, TVL has no scheduled air service whatsoever.

jlemon

8. Continental operating the Viscount is correct! However, you've got one of the stops wrong. And I'm also in error: there were actually five stops en route. Here's the sched....

CO 233: Dallas Love (DAL) 5:50p - 6:05p Fort Worth (GSW) 6:25p - 7:13p Abilene (ABI) 7:23p -8:06p Lubbock (LBB) 8:26p - 8:10p (MST) Clovis (CVN) 8:20p - 9:20p Santa Fe (SAF) 9:35p - 9:59p Albuquerque (ABQ)
Op: Daily
Equip: JET-POWER VISCOUNT II
Meal service: Dinner GSW-ABI (must have been a very quick service)

jlemon

4. Correct! Here's the sched....

EA 205: Fort Worth (GSW) 11:26a - 11:40a Dallas Love (DAL) 12:10p - 1:18p New Orleans (MSY) 1:45p - 4:00p Tampa (TPA) 4:25p - 4:51p Orlando (MCO)
Op: Daily
Equip: B727 Whisperjet
Meal service: Lunch DAL-MSY

WHBM

It was indeed a small number - smaller than that. I believe they were down to just two by 1969, N801PA and N802PA.

It was due to the "through plane" arrangement, which must have been worthwhile to keep because it had become a nuisance to operate. The FAA, and to an extent the pilots unions as well, were always insistent that each side of the arrangement had to crew their part independently, themselves. It didn't matter which side owned the aircraft. Delta had never had Boeing 707s so only had crews licensed on the DC8, so those had to be used, not a problem when Pan Am had the 20 they originally bought but it became so as they sold them off. They couldn't easily get Delta to supply the aircraft either, because Pan Am themselves had to operate the transatlantic sector and have DC8 licensed crew. Although these last two aircraft were sold to Delta at the end of 1969, Pan Am still had to provide DC8 crews. The Pan Am DC8-33s were the last original JT4A engine non-fan aircraft they ran across the Atlantic, their original 707-321 with the same engines had long since been bumped onto shorter Caribbean routes by the newer fan-engine 707s. Delta had newer fan-engine DC8-51s, but these could not be used even when it was their turn to supply the aircraft because the crew training and licences were different for them and Pan Am crews didn't have those. Actually, as long as both the London/Frankfurt and the shorter-lived Paris interchange routes were in operation, Pan Am typically provided the London aircraft and Delta the Paris aircraft.

When the 747 came along to both airlines' fleets that was a change to make, and early Delta 747s started appearing at London. Two aircraft were required to run the complete Atlanta to Frankfurt and back daily run (New Orleans was a change of gauge at Atlanta), normally one of each company, although sometimes both were Pan Am as the arrangement was they supplied aircraft in proportion to each side's mileage, and the Pan Am sector was more than half.

WHBM

I believe that National was always the strong operator on this route, and that the other two would be Eastern and Continental.