jrl767

9- might this have been a 727-100 of the short-lived "First Class service at Coach prices" Air One? their hub was at STL, so TW and Ozark were stiff competition

jlemon

9. Yep, it sure was. Air One (CB) marketed itself as providing "All First Class for the Lowest Coach Fares". Their Boeing 727-100 aircraft were configured all first class with "soft, superwide leather reclining chairs" in a 2-2 seating configuration. The airline promoted its product as being all "First Class service with First Class meals and First Class attention. We're First Class in every way. Except price." Here's the sched.....

CB 004: Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) 2:15p - 3:55p St. Louis (STL) 4:05p - 7:00p Washington D.C. (DCA)
Op: Daily except Saturdays and Sundays
Equip: 727
Meal service: snack DFW-STL, dinner STL-DCA

jrl767

a ten-minute thru stop? that's gotta be a record for anything much bigger than a Convair 580

jlemon

Indeed....and that schedule info came directly from the Aug. 1, 1983 Air One system timetable. Here's another example of a quick turn at STL from this timetable....

CB 011: Kansas City (MCI) 2:00p - 3:00p St. Louis (STL) 3:10p - 6:20p New York Newark (EWR)
Op: Daily except Saturdays
Equip: 727
Meal service: snacks MCI-STL, STL-EWR

WHBM

I had vaguely recalled that Aviateca leased an F28 from Fokker for a year, in preference to another One-Eleven. They were a bit unlucky in that, now that I look it up, the lease started just a couple of days before Court Line went bankrupt, which put a flood of Super One-Elevens onto the market.

This particular little F28-1000, the small initial type, was one of a sad group. When the F27 turboprop started off, Fokker got into an arrangement with Fairchild to manufacture and sell them in the USA, which Fairchild, despite only having done military aircraft before, made a singular success of, and sold significant numbers to many of the secondary Local Service Carriers of the era. The Fairchild-built aircraft were actually first into service, just, in 1958, and a couple of hundred were built over the next 10 years.

Both companies anticipated the same success with the F28, seen as being a natural successor. Fokker built an initial batch of 10, which starting in 1969 were shipped over to Fairchild in Hagerstown MD - and there they sat for years, unwanted by anyone. The later ones were not even sent over the Atlantic, but Fokker stored them back in the Netherlands. Eventually Fokker took them back, and managed to place them all pretty quickly. The one leased to Aviateca in Guatemala for a year was one of these.

It was then sold on to LADE in Argentina in 1977, which is a joint military-government operation to remote areas. Guess what, it and its colleagues which did the same are still around in the same operation 40 years later. Here's the fleet on the ground at the Argentine Air Force base in Buenos Aires when the Google cameraship passed overhead.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@-34.6.../data=!3m1!1e3

jlemon

In 1967, Fairchild Hiller ran a print ad headlined "West Coast Airlines orders the first Fairchild Hiller F-228!" The ad went on to say "priced about $1 million less than the nearest competitive jet, the F-228 will operate for 25% less and fly 20 to 40 knots faster." This ad also mentioned that West Coast had ordered the first Fairchild F-27 ten years earlier. However, the F-228, which I believe was slightly smaller version of the F28 series 1000, was never built and West Coast ended up operating the DC9 in addition to the F-27 (as well as several small Piper "Mini-liners").

WHBM

I think the answer will be one. It was a secondhand cargo/passenger Combi, and it was being operated well away from any of Continental's main bases.

Surely the answer to this question is Zero ...

Here's a bit of a Bonus Question. The Fairchild F-228 failed due to a major uncertainty over whether its engine was going into production (which in the end it never was). What other US manufacturer was also proposing a jet airliner at the time with the same engine ?

Reds2011

I'm going to say: Atlantic Gulf Airlines? The aircraft type has already been identified as a Convair 580.

jlemon

5. Correct! And this particular aircraft was being operated in a remote area of the world. In fact, it was the one and only Boeing 727-100C being flown by the Air Micronesia operation in the western Pacific at the time.

So what about the rest of the Continental fleet in 1972? Well, we've already established that CO was operating four Boeing 747-100 aircraft at this time. Here's the remainder of the fleet composition as of March 10, 1972:

Boeing 707-320C - 12 (including two freighter aircraft and four others assigned to MAC charter operations)
Boeing 720B - 8
Boeing 727-200 - 22
Douglas DC-9-10 - 19

Thus, Continental was operating 66 jet aircraft in 1972 and also had eight DC-10s on order.

19. Ah, I could have phrased this one a bit better, couldn't I? @:-) This from the 1970 United annual report: "United's fleet of 20 Caravelles was removed from regular service in October 1970. Seven Caravelles have been sold thus far, along with related flight training equipment."

jlemon

11. Correct! I believe Atlantic Gulf (ZY) began operations with a pair of Vickers Viscount aircraft and then switched to the Convair 580, at least one of which had been formerly operated by Frontier. In early 1984, Atlantic Gulf was operating only one other route besides PIE-ATL being PIE-MIA with three round trip flights on weekdays on each route. This new start-up then disposed of their Convair 580s and introduced BAC One-Eleven service before going out of business.

jlemon

The above remain up for grabs. Plus, WHBM has kindly posed several bonus quiz items that remain unanswered.

jrl767

I was able to unearth the following:
(Day 1) EWR-BWI-BNA-MEM - American; MEM-LIT-FSM-TUL - Braniff; TUL-SHV-MSY - Braniff
(Day 2) MSY-GUA - Aviateca
(Day 3*) GUA-MIA - Aviateca
*- on Saturdays it was possible to fly MSY-GUA-MIA

Indelaware

60 seats in 2-2 configuration.

jlemon

15. Correct!

jlemon

Well, I think Vickers was actually part of BAC by this time. If so, it's wild guess time.....

Perhaps a BOAC Super VC10 was involved here, say from New York to Nassau. And perhaps a connection was then made to a Viscount in Nassau for the flight to Miami.