kochleffel

I lived in Connecticut in the early 1990s and flew at least once from HVN. That was UA to ORD and I am nearly certain that the aircraft was a 737. So I'll try two 737 flights from ORD and one from IAD.

WHBM

I recall flying through Gatwick in what must be 1982 and seeing the Pan Am Tristar sat late afternoon, well after departure time of the Houston flight, sat over in the remote parking area on the south side of the runway, opposite side to the terminal. Must have run into some snag. They were not a common sight in Britain then, but a couple of the Pan Am ones, which were all sold after a few years, came to the RAF who have got more than 30 years further service out of them, and one, now ZE705, is still flying.

I believe there's still a widespread opinion that the Tristar autoland has never been beaten, and that the test pilots had it in crosswinds well beyond the certified values and it behaved impeccably.

The basic concepts of Autoland as we now know it was principally developed on the Hawker Siddeley Trident in the mid 1960s (there was a somewhat different French system on a few of the Caravelle), and more than one BEA Trident was loaned to the development team for some years. US developments at the time were based around augmenting information presented to pilots, whereas the UK approach was for fully automatic operation. The first Trident Autoland was in 1965, although the team had been working on it for 20 years previously.

What this has to do with the Tristar is that once developed, the key engineers were rather forgotten, R&D funding reduced, and a number of the brightest members were picked off by Lockheed to leave dreary Bedfordshire, where they were based, for the bright lights of Beautiful Downtown Burbank, where they arrived with all their good further ideas there had been no money for previously.

BEA, and later British Airways, used to give out a special tie (scarf for the ladies) to early days passengers who had been on an Autoland arrival at Heathrow, which turn up occasionally on eBay.

kochleffel

I'll try Raleigh-Durham, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Fayetteville, and Greenville.

moondog

Asheville

jrl767

first guesses: the destinations are Denver (DEN)x2, Vail/Eagle (EGE), and Hayden/Steamboat Springs (HDN); DEN got the M80/735, and the ski centers got the bigger 757s

I have to think this was AirTran (recently sprung from the ill-fated ValuJet, hence the "never heard of") with a DC9-30 stopping at Dulles and Atlanta

Seat 2A

Seat 2A

teddybear99

I will say Southwest Airlines with the different variants of the B737.

Again, Southwest Airlines to Houston Hobby as DAL was restricted by the Wright Amendment at this time.

teddybear99

How about Pan-American Airways with stops at JFK and Washington-Dulles along the way. This was a new airline that bought the rights to the Pan Am name. They also had only Airbus A300's in their fleet.

WHBM

I don't think even Southwest, who were ramping up at Nashville at the time, would have gone this far, so I'll say it was someone from the other end of the route, Western Pacific, who were trying to make a hub at Colorado Springs. Nashville traffic probably looked fair game as American were giving up their short-lived hub there, although Nashville had always been an American major point ever since the 1930s on their transcontinental route, and most of what WP offered through Colorado Springs was duplicated by AA maintaining a high frequency operation to DFW and onward.

Western Pacific was an all-737 airline, notable that they did full-size advertising on their aircraft for various businesses, at the same time as Ryanair were doing this.

I've only been to Colorado Springs once, passing through in 1974 on a Greyhound bus one weekend morning heading from Santa Fe to Denver. It didn't look very significant then and I wonder whether that's changed ...

jrl767

to my knowledge WN never operated the -400 ... this was more likely USAir to their Pittsburgh hub


46- hmmmmmmm .... skipped right over that "four distinct airports" ... just off my 116th redeye (out of 2400+ flights) yesterday morning, not that that's ever been an excuse

didn't CO also operate EWR-Telluride (TEX) during ski season? if so, that would probably have been the 735, leaving the MadDog on the EWR-DEN trip

VH-RMD

11. I'll go with AC Vancouver to LA; QF JFK-LAX and CO but not sure from where...

jrl767

I can attest that, on 29 March, this LAX-EUG flight was operated by N216NN, a Compass Airlines ERJ-175 in American Eagle livery ... imo a far better flight experience than a CRJ-700

in 1996 the trip was probably still in the USAir timetable ... not sure if the ex-PSA BAe 146s were still in service; if not, maybe a 737-300

can we please learn the competitive destination?

WHBM

All the ex-PSA BAe146s were withdrawn in one hit in May 1991 and stored at Mojave. It took quite some years before they started coming back to European operators, where quite a number of different airlines operating into London City took advantage of them at decidedly low prices. I went in a fair few over time, and despite their years baked in the sun I never had a mechanical delay from one.

kochleffel

The Experimental Aircraft Association is bringing its Ford Trimotor to my local airport this week. Should I book a 15-minute flight? Anyone done this?