Air Travel Nostalgia $299 Go anywhere on Eastern Airlines

It was either 1959, 1960 or 1961 I had my first flight on a 707 - such a big noisy plane in those days! After years of plying the North Atlantic by liner we decided to take to the skies now that the jets were here!!!

Idlewild (JFK now, for all you greenhorns) to Heathrow.

Except it didn't.

Two thirds of the way down the runway and probably just short of vR we had a flame out - with a terrific BANG which shook the plane and screeched to a halt.

Now that was exciting, I'll tell you. After the serenity of the boats - just a little seasickness every trip near Ireland - that was almost a bit too exciting really.

4 or 5 hours later back on a plane - don't remember if it was the same one or a different one with a repaired engine - off we went again, uneventfully that time. Got my wings after a trip to see the captain. I think it was BOAC - the predecessor to and much better than BA.

My first time flight on a "regular" airline, ie, not a charter, was in the summer of 1973 flying SFO to Paris Orly, non-stop. That was a TWA flight, the cheapest seat possible. I never had a chance to fly with Eastern or Pan Am, I missed something.

I still have the Pan Am tickets from when we moved the family to the States. We had two foot lockers per person at no extra charge because the weight limit was over seventy pounds per piece of luggage.

Remember how Northwest was Northwest Orient! Now it's all Delta. And Southwest had plush leather seats, some in a foursome.

Yes I do... And of course the old Continental Airlines also had great leather seats and was always one of my favorites and the only way (almost) to get to Micronesia: Continental/Air Micronesia or Air Mike as it was called.

And one of my favorite Airlines TWA Trans World Airlines. They too had a huge route network all over the globe especially strong to Europe and if I remember correctly to South America.

Yes the seats were wide, the Flight attendants were called "Stewerdesses and Stewards" and they actually smiled. You were treated like a real person and there were no hincky devices to measure your luggage. Yes some things have changed for the better..the aircraft for one. But the concept of customer service died quite awhile ago for US based airlines.

I liked being a passenger in BOEING 747 airplanes. I usually do not talk about that, because some people might think I am bragging, and some people would be hatefully envious of me. But I think I am safe at this internet website, in "Travel Forum". And many persons who read this Travel Forum did much more travel in Europe, than I did. And they had more glamorous and luxurious travel experiences than I had. In the summer of 1974 I was a passenger in a BOEING 747 airplane of United Airlines, from San Francisco (in California) to Honolulu (at Hawaii). My seat was in the lowest priced section. I think it was called "Coach". But I could walk into the cocktail lounge in the "nose" of that huge airplane. An electric organ was in there. The top of it was the bar on which were drinks. The organ was not played in that flight. And I did not drink any alcohol. It was my first flight across an ocean. I was on my knees on the seat of a chair (the chair's back was against the wall at the left side). I looked through the window, down on the Pacific Ocean. Good blue color. Seeing the "little" ships down there was fascinating. An other airplane of an airline, flew past our airplane, going the opposite direction. It seemed close. It may have been one half of one mile. (We were not in danger). I liked being in that wide body airplane. AIrlines stopped using the 747. Did airlines resume using 747, for international flights, again in recent years ?

Sometime in the early ‘70’s Air California had $10 midnight flights from Orange County to San Francisco. You would show up at the airport, get in line with your backpack and sit along the wall of the jetway. Sometime close to midnight you would hand someone a $10 bill and board the plane. I’m amazed when I think back on that with today’s TSA standards. Good times!

I grew up watching the movie “The High and the Mighty” staring John Wayne and Robert Stack. It was made in 1954 and must have been on TV every other month. I was fascinated by it. It was about a plane that is flying from Hawaii to San Francisco and the plane loses an engine. It was very suspenseful as you didn’t know if they were going to have to land in the water. Little did I know that I would relive that movie for real on a return trip from Germany in 1975. We were over the Atlantic at night on a 747 when an engine on the right side caught fire. Twenty minutes later, an engine on the left side caught fire and the plane descended to about 5,000 feet. There was a storm on the east coast which prevented a plane landing with only two engines due to the high winds. We had to fly thru the storm all the way to Chicago where we landed with fire trucks lining the runway. I had great respect for the 747 that flew so far on two engines. The flight engineer talked to me after we landed. The first engine overheated and caught fire. The second engine developed an oil leak and caught fire. He said that they could have started the first engine back up if they needed it. I never developed a fear of flying.

I flew on a charter airline from Boeing Field in Seattle to Frankfurt in 1972. They weighed each passenger, I think to balance the weight on the plane, and they actually advertised for passengers who would be interested in acting as flight attendants for the flight. While I didn’t take them up on the offer, and I don’t know if anyone else did, I don’t remember noticing anything unusual from the flight attendant service during the flight.

That TWA flight to Paris in 1973 mentioned above was a 747, my first time on a 747. The plane used by the charter flight company on my first trip over, OAK to Gatwick, return Amsterdam to OAK in 1971 was a DC-8.

I must of been about 10 year old, 1976, & my first flight was from Southern California to Northern California on the "Banana", Hughes Air West airline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgqHi3SBrLY

L-1011 anyone? Royal Caledonian. Neat plane. Then they started falling apart and were all turned into in-flight refuelers. Ah yes. Good onboard service, too.

VC-10 (BOAC). Very noisy at the back, very quiet at the front. Cool planes. I think they became in-flight refuelers too.

My wife was on a sales retreat (aka party) and got to take me to St. Thomas in the American Virgin Islands. The last hop was from Miami to St. Thomas on a hopper because the airport on St. Thomas couldn't take jets. Said hopper was an ancient (even then) DC-3. I knew why we had waited for jets before flying. Nice enough but a bit of vibration, well so much we couldn't hear ourselves think. Very small cabin, the plane was very shiny because of the silver aluminum outside. I spent most of the flight wondering what was going to happen as I watched a wing-nut very slowly unscrew itself from a panel at the top of the engine slowly allowing the panel to lift up and open. We didn't die but I didn't like DC-3s as much afterward. That was on the outbound. We had such a good time there that I forgot to look at the engines on the way back - it may have been a different plane or maybe nothing caught my eye. We survived that too. I do remember having to go up to the plane on the tarmac and receive our bags as they were handed out of the hold.

Anybody remember the Eastern Shuttle? Turn up and buy a ticket and hop the plane waiting outside. LaGuardia to Logan. If the plane filled up they wheeled out another. I forget how often the schedule was but I think it was something like every hour or 90 minutes.

And the PanAm helicopter from Manhattan to Idlewild/JFK?

Good times.... Thanks aarthurperry for the thread...

A couple others....

my wife reminds me about the garment bag closets. A hanging garment bag and a bag under the seat. Them was the days.

And a tiny tiny plane, a puddle jumper, from the cyclone fencing just outside the single room waiting room next to the runway, for the flight from Temple, Texas to Love Field in Dallas. Don't remember the name of the airline which later became a feeder to American. Fun.

The L1011 was actually a very good plane with a great safety record actually better than it's competitors and especially that of the DC10 which was a disaster on wings. The L1011 was a very quiet aircraft and very roomy. I have flown all of the Medium Body/Wide body jets except for the A380 and my favorites are the 777/787, L1011 and of course the 747-8 extended upper deck (and most of the 747 fleet)

But the thing about the L1011 it was a very beautiful aircraft sitting still and in flight.

The first time I went from Palenque (Mexico) to San Cristobal de las Casas, in 1973, it was a 12-hour ride on mountain roads in the back of someone's VW bug. The second time, in 1977, I had read in Fodors about a plane. So after breakfast at our Palenque hotel, with only one other hotel guest up at that hour, we went to the airfield. It was a six-seat, single-propeller plane that cut the twelve-hour trip to 30 minutes. And the pilot was the other guest from the hotel, while we were the only passengers. Fun!

BA used to run shuttle flights from Heathrow to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Pay on the plane and get something that looked like a bus ticket as a receipt.

Heathrow through the 1960s was a tourist destination in its own right with the roof garden on top of the Queen's Building, sat next to the Europa terminal which had its own observation deck, as did the Oceanic Terminal (the core of the present day Terminal 3 and the only one of these buildings left standing).

Less pleasant memory is being all to often sat just in front of the smoking section which those days had cigar and pipe smokers as much as cigarette ones.

Obsolete airlines I remember being on? Dan Air, Laker, BCal, Braniff, Pan Am, TWA, Debonair, Canadian, Canada 3000, Western, Gill Aviation and many more I can't bring to mind.

Plus British Midland, where for pure nostalgia (and a bit of status running) I few a day trip to Brussels the last day they operated that flight (not that long before being finally absorbed by BA). I talked a bit with the cabin crew on the way out, and were surprised later to find they were also doing the return, as it should have been a different type of plane. Just before take off they announced over the PA to invited me by name to travel 'business class as our personal guest'. All eyes were on me as I got up and walked to the front. Very gracious by someone being made redundant the next day.

Braniff!!! Thanks for memories..... and for their ads and colours.....

And there was PSA, Pacific Southwest Airlines all 727's I think painted with a big smile on the front.

Didn't PSA become Southwest? Anyone remember Bonanza Airlines--LA to Vegas.

Funny, reading all these posts, I remembered almost all these airlines and their fantastically comfortable seats. Those travels brought to mind this song

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2KODZtjOIPg

Oh yes, 1973: a $129 30-day pass on Aerolinas Argentinas, good for all the flights in Argentina that you could handle, as long as you did not go back to the same place twice, except for connections through Buenos Aires, since almost every route went through BA. Boy, did I milk that one for all it was worth. Tierra del Fuego to the south, Bariloche (then into southern Chile for a few days) and Mendoza to the Andean west, Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata and Commodoro Rivadavia on the east coast, and Salta and Jujuy, near the Bolivian border in the north. Thanks, aarthurperry, I hadn’t thought about any of that in a looooong time!

Ahhh yes, Caledonian flights from Tripoli, Libya to Gatwick...what a party they could be with oil company staff leaving a very dry Tripoli for the UK. BCal put their most experienced flight attendants on these flights: they would be taking drink orders before the passengers had put on their seat belts! And drinks always seem to be ordered in multiples. In spite of this I don’t remember any instances of drunken disorderly behaviour.

Wardair who ran scheduled chartered flights from Canada to the UK in the 1970’s were famous for their dinner service even in economy....large trays set with table linens, Royal Doulton China, full-sized metal silverwear, and their cavery trollies, your beef or whatever meat course was carved in front of you. If you chose fish it was served to you from a serving platter. Of course your choice of wine with the meal. And the dessert trolly.....oh, the dessert trolly! A choice of various decadent looking cakes, fruit and cheese along with appropriate liqueurs. All this for a price less than that offered by the regular airlines. Wardair liked to say they landed the happiest passengers but that coul’ve been something to do with the free booze offered throughout the flight.

I remember flying Canadian Pacific between Calgary and Vancouver (about an hour and a half flight) and being served a good hot breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausages and bacon. Now you are lucky if you get a snack and a glass of O.J!

OMG Lesley! A flying Cunard ship!

At the opposite end of the spectrum, my husband is on an Aeroflot flight in the early seventies. It takes off with people standing in the aisles. The line had a very high crash rate back them.

For an all around great cheap airline UTA French Airlines used to do a Circle Pacific fare that took you from LA to HK, BKK to Australia (I think) then on to Tahiti and back to Los Angeles. To my recollection it was about $900 at the time.

And I do remember many flights with linen table cloths, real silverware, a glass of champagne was in your hands before you even left the gate and truly unobtrusive great service.

Now you have to buy a diet coke and get a "snack" in a box or a doggie bag....

The race to the bottom by the airlines in terms of customer service is appalling. Why oh why do we put up with it? Cheap fares? I think not. There's been a generational shift in expectations that the airlines have taken full advantage of knowing that those of us who can actually remember decent fares, great service and not being nickel-and-dimed to death will all soon be dead.

Ya, great to lament the past but it was also a time of fare and route regulations and restrictions. Airlines could afford great service because of guaranteed profits. Now we want the cheapest price. Look at the recent success of Norwegian Airlines. We complain but we won't pay either. Recently flew a route when three planes from three different airlines departed and landed with 15 minutes of each. My plane had 50 empty seats.

United advised me in November that their last 747 would be retired at the end of Dec. 17. An era may have ended.

Most definitely I remember having the meal on a flight with real silverware. That was the case even on the charter flight from Oakland to Gatwick in June 1971. Those were the days.

Regarding the cheap flights they are out there. I paid the second cheapest price ever for a major carrier for an early summer trip, ie $500 on Br Air, Economy r/t OAK to Gatwick, dep the end of April 2018 for a 39 day trip. This does involve getting back to London for the return, no problems with that. The closest price to that was in the summer of 1973 on TWA SFO to Paris Orley. when I paid $425.

Ya, great to lament the past but it was also a time of fare and route regulations and restrictions. Airlines could afford great service because of guaranteed profits. Now we want the cheapest price

Frank, this is the perceived wisdom and it is the line the airlines are selling for sure. But there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. There are great airlines in the world outside of the US that are very successful and still have roomy seats and great service. And some of the cheapest fares.

Etihad, EMIRATES (a great airline) Singapore Airlines, Thai, EVA, Cathay Pacific, I could go on and on. And then there are the all business class airlines that are filling the service gap (more of a desert in my mind) like La Compagnie. Now all Business class market is littered with failed airlines for sure but their continuing to pop up shows there is demand and sufficient anger over other airlines practices to make a try of it viable.

Just like Cell Phones in America where we pay almost twice the rate of any other country and in many cases have worst service and have to deal with these ridiculous contracts we've been sold a bill of goods. Now the airlines are selling the same type of message. "Willingly pay more for less and less and less"

It wont change unless passengers push back.

Regarding Singapore Airlines....how true! Everyone I have met who has flown with Singapore Air had nothing but praise.

Note that all those airlines that offer upscale experience are all subsidized by their governments. As the European governments have sold off all, or parts, of their airlines, the trips in those planes have become less pleasant, to the point that I see no difference between KLM, Air France, and Delta. In fact, AF charges for seat selection but Delta doesn’t. So we can lament our loss but should the workers in these countries, some of whom may never afford to take a plane, be subsidizing our experience with their taxes? I ask this question each time I take Turkish Airlines, which offers an experience reminiscent of those we no longer have.

First of all the premise that all of the airlines I noted are "'Subsidized" by their governments is not accurate. If by subsidy you mean getting direct financial support, that is extremely rare. However some of those airlines do benefit from their governments policies just as our own do.

In fact there are at least ten major ways in which the US government and the taxpayers subsidize US Airlines. Most other countries have similar laws and programs. See here: http://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2017/07/21/10-ways-taxpayers-subsidize-u-s-airlines/

Take Cathay Pacific, Owned by the Swire Group While it is Hong Kong's Flag Carrier and it does enjoy some of the same government perks as our airlines do it is not a government owned entity by any means or measure and in fact the Swire Group owns many different kinds of companies all over the world including the Coca Cola Bottling Plant/Franchise in Salt Lake City UT.

How these airlines truly differ from our own is their commitment to service and the customer and if you have ever flown one there is no mistaking the difference.

De-regulation is not the issue either. We lived for years under de-regulation of the airlines and still had many with great service and low fares. No this is not about de-regulation or subsidy this is simply and plainly the focus by Boards and CEO's on the maximum short term gain over the long term good and over it's customers needs and preferences.

And as a final note I would point out that de-regulation in Europe had the opposite effect really than it did here in some important ways. In Europe it created much much more competition. Here deregulation was followed by Consolidation and mergers all aided and abetted by US Commerce and Justice departments resulting in less competition and the current state of affairs.

Thank you for the complete and educative post aarthurperry! I've been educated. Merci, and I agree with you about the abominable state and misguided goals of our carriers.