[ImissConcorde]

@Londoncity A rather famous “model” was referred to the Ticket Desk as she hadn’t flown FCO-LHR on a first class ticket to the states. She homed in on me on the desk and fluttered her eyelashes. Pointless really as I am gay and those things on her chest didn’t sway me in the slightest. I relieved her of £2,320.00!!!!!!

[millionsofmiles]

About tricks: In the nineties, handwritten tickets. I needed some sidesteps in Europe for my wife, I had already a stash of legal sidetrips.

So the issuing agent wrote DRxxxxx in stead of Mr or MRS and voila, I used one of my tickets, my wife used the one with DR. No probs at all.

Not possible anymore.

[AMcWhirter]

A popular ticketing wheeze from the 70s and 80s (in the days when IATA policed the fares system) for travel agents was the “ITX fare.”

ITX stood for inclusive tour excursion and, although you needed a Saturday night away, it offered a massive saving on the normal fare.

Remember I am talking about the days when, as amazing as it seems today, there were very few cheap excursion fares within Europe.

But to qualify for the cheaper ITX fare a travel agent had to combine the air ticket with accommodation at the destination.

However no checks were made to see that a hotel had actually been booked. So travel agents issued what was known as a ‘dummy’ hotel voucher. Business people routinely extended their stay and took along a partner. The cost of two ITX tickets was less than the cost of one normal fare ticket.

[lloydah]

Hardly commercial traffic I know but I went to meet my RAF brother who was flying back to UK from Singapore in a Bristol Britannia after his first tour. Stansted in 1962ish, also Lloyd Loom chairs within a scattering of Nissan huts as far as I can remember. Returning in 1993 for an AirUK flight to Nice was somewhat different. The new terminal was almost like a private space at that time. Smiles all round from ground staff, nothing too much trouble. So, have our attitudes changed so dramatically since then or is it numbers? I get agitated and cross in crowds which you always seem to get nowadays at any airport, I wonder if the attitude of staff is affected by this. Of course they can always get a job elsewhere I hear someone say.

[StewartKidd1]

STN was still as you describe in 1988 – very much like ABZ – the coffee shop was like a hospital tea room run by volunteers.

[KeaneJohn]

My first flight was in 1988 when I took a pleasure flight from Southampton Airport (the corrugated huts) with Air Uk in conjunction with a local travel agent. It was £10 and on a Sunday morning and we went to check in and were given as other people have mentioned a sticky number on the boarding card from a label sheet at check in.

I remember flying to JFK on a fully flexible economy ticket to work in 1988 and the ticket was £299 plus £7 US taxes, (APHIS and a Customs User Fee if I recall). This was flying from Terminal 4 and the baggage tag was not with a barcode just the 3 letters on a tag about the same size as an approved cabin luggage tag now for most airlines.

Final memory was flying to Amsterdam with BMI from LHR in 1989. Full hot meal was served including champagne to the one class aircraft on Friday night.

I did some work experience in a travel agent and remember hand writing a ticket I copied one that the agent had done so remember the credit card machine thing.. Think it had a set of numbers like a combination padlock.. Cant remember if that was the date or if it was the airline number,

British Airways used to have Fun Flyer ticket £30 initially then £45 and you would turn up at Heathrow Airport at 10am and you would fly out and back to a European City but it would be on the same aircraft though so sadly no time to explore but opportunity to get a full duty free allowance. I got to sit in the flight deck on the Tristar for the return sector between Charles de Gaulle and Heathrow and pressed the button that started the landing.

I also used the Northwest Airpass. $399 for 30 days unlimited travel in 1988. As people had said it was standby but never had to wait more than 2 or 3 hours to get on a plane and due to their hub and spoke system with high frequency flights feeding different waves and connections if you were flying from say Washington to Dallas and you couldnt go via Memphis you would go via Minneapolis or Detroit so you always got to where you wanted to go..

How air travel has changed… I think in most cases in the right direction with the odd exception.

[LuganoPirate]

I have a vague memory when I was very young of driving to “somewhere” on the South Coast and driving onto the plane. We then flew to Le Touquet, drove off and went somewhere which I equally don’t remember? I have a very vague memory of coming back on the ferry. I must have been 4 or 5 at the time.

[Shearer]

Perhaps from Lydd?
http://www.lyddair.com/

Or perhaps this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_United_Air_Ferries

[StewartKidd1]

There was a previous thread about Air Ferries. I took my brand new Lotus on the air ferry from Southend to Basle in (I think) 1973 – it really was just like Goldfinger ! The plane only took 2/3 cars and the pax sat on an elevated platform behind the flight deck with just a curtain between them. I spent 30 minute in the right hand seat while the 1st/O chatted up my girlfriend.

[LuganoPirate]

Thanks for the links NIR which prompted a bit of research. BUAF started in the 60’s so it couldn’t be them. I think it was Silver City as their service was very popular in 1957-1958 which would fit with my timeline.

[Papillion53]

You really are all old geezers aren’t you????? 😉 🙂

I remember my dad used to take me and my brother to ABZ when the The Queen’s flight came in which was on the “old side” of the airport – the east side opposite the main terminal across the runway, which now houses a helicopter co and the fire and rescue depot. And you could get right up to see her getting off. Of course it was quite unusual as the Royals mainly arrived by Britannia for their summer hols at Balmoral. Was taken to see that as well.

Seem to remember it wasn’t much more than a hut way back then – or am I remembering what I was told???? What was I saying about old geezers??? LOL!

[TiredOldHack]

@LuganoPirate My parents used to live near Rye and as a teenager, I remember watching the car ferry aircraft come over the house. I have a vage recollection of them being called ‘Carvair’, but I could be wrong.

Four-engined piston-engined things. DC4s? DC6s? Made a helluva noise, anyway. This would be around 1970-72.

(Just Googled – Carvairs were indeed converted DC4s and DC6s and did operate from Lydd – flying to Le Tourquet. I am sometimes truly worried about the load of useless information still residing in my skull)

Some 15 years later I went skiing with a now-defunct outfit called Hard’s Travel (the apostrophe and the s were redundant). Coach specialists. Anyway, they flew us across the Channel from Lydd to Ostend where we met our coach. Aircraft was a Fokker Friendship.

[StewartKidd1]

Papillon – quite right…and just to the left of the terminal was the Pegusus Flying Club which managed to teach me enough in 12 hours to get me soloing in a Cessna 150. For my long cross country (under supervision) I flew my mother to PIK in a 172 so she could catch a flight to Canada. It was so long ago and so informal that she walked across the tarmac to the arrivals gate and went to check in !

[AMcWhirter]

My early flights were on Anglo-Scottish routes with BEA (the short-haul forerunner of today’s BA) which was served by 100-seater 4-engined Vanguard turbo-props.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Vanguard

In the late 60s, BEA had a monopoly on routes like LHR to EDI/GLA so it could get away with operating a plane with little passenger appeal.

BEA offered first and economy class but at weekends, the flights were operated one-class.

If you were quick, you could bag a seat in the first class cabin (it was free seating in those days) which was located at the back of the plane which was the quietest seating zone on the Vanguard. Anyone unfortunate enough to sit over the wings would be plagued by noise and vibration from those four turbo-prop engines.

Only when BEA faced competition from the end of the 60s (by BUA ex-LGW and by British Eagle from LHR) did the then state-owned carrier pull up its socks.

The competitors used faster and quieter BAC 1-11 jets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_One-Eleven

BEA responded by drafting in four-engined Comet 4B jets (a later but short-haul version of the original Comet) at peak hours.

These were beautiful planes both to look at and the fly with. But noise levels in flight could be high (depending on where you were seated) owing to those old-fashioned jet engines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet

Domestic flying in those days was elitist yet fares could be affordable as stand-by deals were available.

[canucklad]

CharlesQ…I would guess that if it was off to Canada it would have been an airline called Wardair…..the other airline flying charters from PIK was CP Air, and I suspect you would have remembered their vivid Orange and red diagonal stripe livery ! I re-call my first time on a 747 was from YVR to HNL and not being happy as i flew past Diamond Head and Waikiki on finals….As i was convinced me amd my famly were in mortal danger…..I could only associate the paradise islands with murder and death thanks to Steve McGarret and the rest of his Hawaii 5-0 gang !!!

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