JoeDTW

I remember reading that after the Pan Am / National merger, whenever someone wanting to go to "Melbourne" called the merged airline, if the res agent was ex-PA, she would normally assume the passenger wanted to go to Melbourne, Australia, but if the agent was ex-NA, she would assume the passenger wanted to go to Melbourne, Florida.

JoeDTW

8. If it wasn't UA, I'll guess it was Inland Air Lines, which flew from DEN to MSP and was merged into WA.

18. I'll guess an American Airlines Convair 240.

19. I'll guess a Chicago & Southern L-649 Constellation, via St. Louis

Seat 2A

jlemon

Well, I was just heading out the door to mow the lawn....

And then a bolt of lightning from a rapidly approaching thunderstorm from the north hit a tree just down the street very close to our home.

Hmmmmm....time for Plan Bravo here, which is presently comprised of a cup of coffee featuring freshly ground beans from Costa Rica with just the right amount of Bailey's......and the OTAQ&D.

CRACK!!!!!BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!

Yet another close lightning strike.....this may go on for awhile......and the yard work shall have to be postponed.

19. & 20. I'm thinking this may have been the same airline and equipment in both cases: Braniff International Airways flying a DC-6. The stop between Chicago and Houston Hobby would have been Dallas Love. And I also seem to recall the nonstop from Hobby to Havana had a name: El Conquistador, with this flight continuing to Panama and then on to South America.

Years later when I was attending high school down near the NASA space center, I remember standing on top of one of the concourses at Hobby on the observation deck and watching a blue BAC One-Eleven operated by Braniff taxi into the gate. A KLM DC-8 was parked across the ramp at the adjacent concourse. I had never seen a One-Eleven before and was intrigued. What a neat little jet! I resolved to fly on one and did so several times on Braniff. And I went on to fly on KLM as well on my first trip to Europe.

jlemon

And then there was the gentleman who thought he was boarding a flight at LAX to Oakland. He wound up in Auckland.

WHBM

As we are doing gross blunders by passengers back in the day, even better was a holidaying gentleman on a Condor charter flight (757 I think) from Frankfurt to San Francisco which made an intermediate fuel and customs clearance stop at Bangor, Maine. He clearly hadn't absorbed the instructions, because at Bangor, where bags were delivered on the carousel and he then took his out through customs, instead of going to the recheck counter for the onward leg, he thought he was there ... so he walked out and got a cab - to where he had a reservation, the Holiday Inn. Well, of course there is one in Bangor so the cab dropped him off, at the hotel front desk in his halting English it transpired they did not have his reservation, but never mind, they had rooms, so he checked in, took a nap, then walked downstairs to the front desk, and asked "Where are ze cablecars ... ?".

kochleffel

When did he notice that something was wrong?

I lived in Bloomington, Ind., back when it had service from ORD on Allegheny Commuter. I remember one distinguished visitor who arrived without luggage because it had been sent to Bloomington, Ill. (There was also a chance that luggage would be ticketed to Birmingham or Binghamton.) The visitor didn't end up in the Illinois town herself only because, when she saw "Ozark" painted on the side of the aircraft, it didn't feel right.

jlemon

Well, I'm not sure.....but I do seem to recall that when he arrived at AKL, he was already aware that he was not in California.

I used to fly in and out of Santa Maria, CA on occasion back in the day. The three letter code for the airport is SMX. However, on a number of occasions, bags for other passengers would be sent to SXM which, of course, is St. Maarten in the Caribbean.

moondog

Continuing with the blunders sidebar conversation, I've been burned by nkg v nng twice, and a friend of mine made the short v sjc mistake in 1999. While we were driving to sjc, I remarked to him that co had recently stopped flying sjc-ewr, and was surprised that they resurrected the route in such short order. After a quick phone call to co, he realized the mistake, and changed to sfo-ewr for an additional $900. While he could have flown F for much less, he wanted a nonstop flight, and his travel department was to blame for the sjo snafu, so he had no regrets.

Seat 2A

My understanding of this is that he came in on ANZ from London. When he asked an ANZ agent about reboarding a flight to Oakland, they thought he said Auckland and directed him to the AKL bound flight.

He first noticed something was wrong when the Captain came on shortly after leveling off and projected a 12 hour and some odd flight down to Auckland. Whaaaaat?!

Upon arrival in Auckland, ANZ comped him a day tour of Auckland and flew him back up to North America later that night.

Seat 2A

Seat 2A

I was quite taken by Braniff the first time I ever saw one of its pastel colored 707s come in for a landing at Denver's Stapleton International Airport. Back in those days it was quite popular to drive out onto the gravel pad along what we always called the East-West runway. My mom would take us kids out there and - it should be noted - she was just about as excited about the new jetliners as I was! Afterwards, we'd usually visit the airport's full service restaurant for delicious club sandwiches.

My first flight on Braniff didn't come until I was a senior in high school. By then I had mastered the intricacies of joint fares and so traded in a DEN-LAX nonstop on United for a similarly priced joint fare from Colorado Springs to Los Angeles using Braniff to Denver and then Western via Phoenix to LA. I boarded a lime green Braniff 727-100 at COS for the short flight up to Denver followed by a pair of Western 720Bs DEN-PHX-LAX with First Class legroom and horrible (even to a high school student) Franzia Brothers "Champagne". Those were great days to fly around America.

I was similarly taken with Hughes Airwest's bright yellow DC-9s and F27s. Besides flying quite a few of them all around the West, I also visited (by air and/or by car) every airport served by RW (except Vandenburg AFB) in California, Idaho and Nevada and most of them in Utah, Oregon, Washington and Montana.

Seat 2A

Here are the remaining unanswered questions. Once the majority of these get addressed, then I'll submit a few more from later in the 50s, eventually moving on up through the 60s. Alright then, go get 'em!


THE TIMELINE FOR THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS IS LATE 1948

2A. This airline’s 1948 ads claimed it to be the second most elderly airline in America. Which airline is it?
2B. As of 1948, what was the oldest major airline in America?
2C. Identify the oldest continually operating airline regardless of size in America.

4. What was Aeronaves de Mexico’s sole American gateway city in 1948?
A N S W E R E D

5. The WHBM Special You and the Missus want to fly from New York to Bermuda. A previously poor experience on BOAC a couple of years earlier has your wife referring to BOAC as “Better On A Camel”. You beg to differ but she’ll not be dissuaded and so you must choose between two U.S. airlines – one of which serves the NYC-BDA route with a Lockheed Constellation while the other employs a DC-4. Identify each of the U.S. airlines relative to the equipment they’ll be operating

6. You’ve just arrived in Bermuda for a week’s vacation only to discover that what was initially dismissed as a weak tropical depression in the South Atlantic has now begun to form into a category 3 hurricane. Worse yet, it’s swung northwest toward Bermuda. Telegrams are quickly exchanged with the result being that you are now booked on tomorrow’s early morning nonstop flight to sunny Miami, Florida where a suite at South Beach’s swank National Hotel awaits. Identify the airline and aircraft that will deliver you down to South Florida.


THE TIMELINE FOR THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS IS 1950

This set of questions will be presented as a point to point tour, starting off in chilly Nome, Alaska and ending up in sunny Havana, Cuba.

11. Snow falls lightly at Nome as we board our 10:30am flight, bound for Seattle, WA. The flight makes a single stop enroute. Identify the airline, the aircraft and the enroute stop.
A N S W E R E D

12. Following a wonderful weekend with friends on Bainbridge Island, we’re off to sunny Spokane, WA aboard Northwest Airlines. Northwest operates three different types of aircraft on the SEA-GEG route. Identify each aircraft type offered and, in an essay of 1000 words or less, explain which one you’d most like to fly upon and why.

13. The jlemon Special Today we’re going to fly aboard one of America’s first “Feeder Airlines” on a nine-stop odyssey between Spokane and Boise, Idaho. Identify the airline, the aircraft and each of the nine stops in order.

14. Continuing our rather roundabout journey, we board this airline’s daily two-stop service to Portland, Oregon. Identify the airline, the aircraft and the two intermediate stops along the way.

After three gorgeous days in the City of Roses, we’re off to San Francisco, California. Although nonstop flights to SFO are available, we want to keep it interesting by utilizing two airlines we’ve not yet flown upon. We’ll begin by flying the first airline to the southernmost city in its route network. That same city represents the northernmost point in our connecting airline’s route network.

15A. Identify the first airline we’ll fly, the aircraft and the route flown from Portland including the four intermediate stops to its southernmost city.

15B. Identify the airline we’ll be connecting to, the aircraft and the three-stop route flown from its northernmost city to San Francisco. Hint: The flight is marketed as “The San Francisco Express”
A N S W E R E D

From San Francisco we’ll travel overland to Cheyenne, Wyoming aboard the Union Pacific railroad’s crack streamliner “The City of San Francisco”.

16. Following a long weekend spent at a business partner’s ranch in the nearby Medicine Bow Mountains, we return to Cheyenne where we are presented with a choice of three airlines offering service down to Denver, Colorado. Two of the airlines offer nonstop flights while the third offers a single daily one-stop flight. Identify each of the three airlines and the enroute stop that one of them makes.

17. After a successful combination of business and pleasure culminating with lunch at Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel, it’s off to Stapleton Airport where we’re booked on a flight that’s marketed as “The Oil King”. Our destination is Tulsa, OK. Two enroute stops are made along the way. Identify the airline, the aircraft and the enroute stops.

Bonus Question 20B: Identify the other airline (besides Braniff) that was operating a nonstop flight between Houston and Havana. Additionally, identify the aircraft flown and the name that the flight was marketed under.
A N S W E R E D

WHBM

Well, if we must ... In 1961 there was a major political scandal between UK government minister Gerald Profumo, and "girl-about-town" Christine Keeler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profumo_affair . Nothing particularly unusual about that, but political satire magazine Private Eye, then in its infancy, managed to get a photo of Profumo at the top of a BOAC 707's front steps. The livery had the airline's initials right behind the door and in shot. The photo was on the front cover with the straightforward caption "Bend Over Again Christine" ...

Maybe the inspiration for a later moment, for BEA had a similar style but their initials appeared, white on a red square, ahead of the door. So for a very obscure bonus question, who (individual) appeared at the top of a BEA Vanguard's steps with a modification, provided by the airline's PR department, to the airline's name shown there ?

jlemon

4. I'm thinking this may have been Nogales, Arizona with connections being available to service operated by a U.S. air carrier. However, if correct, I have no idea with regard to the identity of the U.S. based airline that was serving Nogales at the time.

11. Sure sounds like Pan American World Airways operating a DC-4 with a stop in Fairbanks. I'll also bet the service was not operated on a daily basis.

Bonus Question 20B. Hmmmmm.....the Chicago & Southern route map at the time depicted nonstop service between Houston Hobby and Havana......but in reality one had to fly on board a C&S operated DC-3 from HOU to New Orleans and then connect to their "Caribbean Comet" service operated with a DC-4 nonstop from MSY to Havana. C&S was not authorized to carry local traffic on the HOU-MSY service so the sole purpose of this domestic flight was to provide connecting service. Not the best answer from yours truly but there you go......