cs57

Re: Question about Cathay Pacific 880 aircraft with the "m" designation. This indicated that the aircraft was using a newer version of the General Electric CJ-805-3 engine. Now time to go back and do yard work!!!!!!

jlemon

Thanks for that, cs57!

And speaking of the Convair 880 back in 1963......

I'll go ahead and answer one of my previous questions concerning the first scheduled passenger airline jet service operated from Oakland (OAK):

The airline was TWA and the aircraft was the Convair 880. Routing was OAK-ORD and the year was 1963.

Seat 2A

jlemon

Actually, the "Space Corridor", as defined by Eastern Airlines (which came up with the term in order to promote their new routes to SEA and PDX from STL), linked the Kennedy Space Center (being Orlando (MCO) and Melbourne (MLB) with both airports being listed as serving the "Kennedy Space Center" in the EA timetable) with Huntsville (HSV), St. Louis (STL), Portland (PDX) and Seattle (SEA).

The Seattle service was aimed at the Boeing folks, St. Louis for the McDonnell Douglas folks, Huntsville is the location of NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center, and as for Portland....well, I don't know if the PDX area had any space-related activities at the time but EA included it anyway on their "Space Corridor" route!

Typical routings were SEA-PDX-STL-HSV-MCO-MLB or MLB-MCO-HSV-STL-SEA. Both were flown with a B727-100.

EA also flew one stop direct service from LAX to MLB via ATL with a B727-100 at one point in addition to operating a HOU-MSY-HSV round trip with a DC-9-30 during the Apollo program.

Seat 2A

miniliq

Likewise -- made ten trips there in the last 18 months MSY-IAH-POS RT.

If it please the court, I submit the following evidence from the thread "50 Years Of HS 748 Flying" on airliners.net:

"The BW 748s were originally flown by arawak Airlines and later Trinidad and Tobago Air Services (TTAS) on the POS - TAB airbridge. When BW merged with TTAS in 1980 it inherited the fleet of 3 Avros and later added 3 more. BW used them to serve GND, FDF and SLU at various times as well as the domestic service, as the airbridge would later be known. The planes left the fleet in 1986."

miniliq

My excuse for not listing Lake Charles was the date on my OAG -- Jan 1974. At that time, TT was still using Convairs to service LCH.
Can't get them all correct!

Thanks for all of your digging to find these questions -- great fun.

Seat 2A

It's about time I contributed to the question collection. Here's a few to ponder...

1.) Cubana ordered two 707s but was unable to take delivery due to the embargo against Castro’s government. What happened to those 707s and what made them distinct by U.S. standards?

2.) Which U.S. airline operated the Fokker 70?

3.) What was Pan American’s Economy Class service branded as back in the 1960s?

4.) What airline once operated daily 747 nonstop flights between Chicago and Anchorage?

5.) What airline once flew stretch DC-8s between Anchorage and Fairbanks?

6.) Braniff originally ordered two 747-127s but only took delivery of one. That aircraft was painted orange. What color would the second one have been?

7.) Continental's original 747-124s were amongst the most comfortable 747s ever to fly with 9 across seating, three lounges and three separate passenger cabins or "Rooms". Anyone know the names of these rooms? And, as a bonus, name the lounges.

8.) What South Pacific based airline operated the BAC-111?

9.) What South Pacific based airline operated the Caravelle?

10.) Name three Pacific Island based airlines that operated the 727-100

11.) Name the major U.S. airline and its jet aircraft that once served Pendleton, Oregon

12.) Back in 1980 I flew aboard this airline on the following routing: DEN-GTF-FCA-GEG-SEA. What airline was it?

tonywestsider

Here are my responses to some of them:

2.) Mid Pacific Airlines
3.) Pan Am called Economy Class "Rainbow Class" back in the 1960s
7.) CO'S 747-124s actually had four rooms, which were: The Kamehameha Room (the nose), followed by The Kabuki Room, The Bougainville Room and the Micronesia Room. The lounges were the Oceania Lounge in the upper deck, the Polynesian Pub in the cabin between The Kamehameha Room and the Kabuki Room and the Ponape Lounge in back of the Micronesia Room for Economy Class passengers.
8.) Air Nauru used to operate BAC-1-11s
9.) UTA (Union de Transports Ariens) used to operate Caravelles
10.) I stand to be corrected on this: Air Micronesia, Trans Australia Airlines (which became Australian Airlines), Air Tungaru (predecessor of now Air Kiribati).

WHBM

I don't believe that Air Nauru had One-Elevens, although Air Pacific, with their One-Eleven 475 "hot-rods", were one of the few carriers to operate into there. Air Nauru started off with a Falcon business jet (just like FedEx did) and moved on through a Fokker F28 to Boeings. The operation was pretty much run, crewed and managed wholly by expat Australians under contract. By all accounts loads rarely exceeded what that Falcon might have handled, and completely empty sectors were not uncommon. Nauru, a Pacific island mini-state between Fiji and The Philippines, made its money from mining, when the mineral ran out they lost airline and airport.

Seat 2A

Thank you to WHBM for the excellent answer regarding Air Pacific's BAC-111 and especially a bit of history on Air Nauru. I believe they were mining phosphate down there on Nauru and for awhile the citizens were doing pretty well. Last I heard unemployment exceeded 80%!

WHBM

The original question was which "based" airline in this region operated Caravelles, to which the answer I would give would be AirCalin, 1983-87, running from Noumea to Australia and New Zealand. The English-language Wikipedia AirCalin page is only a summary, not covering the Caravelle, but the French version is much more descriptive.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircalin

However, well before this UTA did have Caravelle operations out of Noumea as well, and in fact on the same routes. UTA, a French long-haul airline from Paris, had a range of bizarre operations, but their Caravelle were one of the most extraordinary. They only bought two, in the mid-1960s. One ran from Paris two or three times a week, hip-hopping through some African minor points, which lacked the airfield facilities and/or loads to warrant a mainstream DC-8. The other was based in Noumea and ran services around the Pacific, again on very low frequency; it had taken over from a DC-4 which did the same thing. Quite how UTA managed to operate efficiently just two Caravelles, each based at opposite ends of the earth, has to be one of those mysteries, just like how they managed Los Angeles to Tahiti near-daily for many years when their only licences connecting this with their Paris base were out through Asia and across the South Pacific - and they did send their DC-8s, and later DC-10s, this way, running Paris-Asian points-Noumea-Tahiti-LAX, then doing one or more LAX-Tahiti shuttles, as well as Tahiti to Tokyo and Sydney, finally picking up a return leg to Paris. French flight crews were on a (doubtless very pleasant) long-term secondment to Tahiti or Noumea, but all the maintenance beyond daily line checks was done in Paris. I do wonder if there were any AirCalin Caravelle captains in Noumea who had, 20 years before, been junior UTA Caravelle first officers there.

Here's part of the 1968 UTA schedule in the Pacific, complete with the Caravelles

http://www.timetableimages.com/ttima...68/ut68-06.jpg

Now while I am writing this, I recall there was also for many years a detachment of French Air Force Caravelles in Tahiti as well, supporting the French missile tests in the area. Here's two of them.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Franc...0be9e4c80edaab

miniliq

America West Express (Mesa Airlines) had two F-70s for awhile, flying PHX-FAT, PHX-DSM, and PHX-GEG 1995-97. Perhaps other routes as well.

jlemon

Seat 2A's question #2: Technically speaking, the Fokker F-70 operator was Desert Sun Airlines, a division of Mesa operating as America West Express. I remember seeing one of their F-70s at GEG. The folks at Horizon Air (which was operating the F-28 at the time) at GEG were wishing they would upgrade to the F-70 (the CRJ-700 was not yet available). However, QX never operated the F-70 and I believe that Mesa division Desert Sun was the only operator of the F-70 in North America in sched pax ops. Mesa later replaced their F-70s with 50 pax CRJs.

jlemon

4) Northwest Orient?

11) United with the B727-100.

12) Frontier with a B737-200?