[Travellator]

FDOS

Re Dan Air Comets.

They were serviced at Lasham which was a gliding centre near Basingstoke – I worked in a glider factory there during summer hols.

When the Comets arrived they took down the barbed wire fences at the ends of the runway it was that marginable !

[dutchyankee]

@AMcWhirter – 21/08/2013 12:56 GMT

Great photo of the Concordes at Glasgow! That would have been a great treat for the shuttle passengers. I was lucky enough to fly Concorde 11 times in my life, 8 with my family due to my fatehr`s job, twice as an adult pre AF crash, and once after the kevlar refurbishment. memories I will always have.

On the shuttle service, I think it was the Eastern Airlines shuttle between LGA and BOS/DCA that started the trend of having back up planes should even one extra passenger arrive for the flight.

@ MontanaKen – 21/08/2013 20:24 GMT

The IGS (Internal Germany Service) operated by Pan Am, and of course BA/AF was historic and extremely prfitable for PA in the 70`s and 80`s. Pan Am utilised 727-100, then 200, and then a mix of 737 and A310 on the routes with the A310 the only ones offering a first cabin.

I am an avid collector of historic Airline memorabilia, and have thousands of timetables from the 30`s up to current day of numerous airlines, but my favorites are PA, BA/BOAC, KL, AF, SK, BN, TW to name but a few. I think I have every printed PA timetable from `56 up until their last one in `91.

edit: I do mean every English language PA timetable; while I do have some in German and Japanese.

[TominScotland]

Talking of trans-Pacific Hoppa Services, in the late 1980s, we flew Qantas from Sydney to Nadi, then Papeete, Honolulu, Los Angeles and, finally, San Francisco. As this was a leisure, RTW ticket, we stopped off at each point, spent a couple of days enjoying ourselves and waited for the next bus to turn up.

In relation to timetables, I picked up a couple of Aeroflot editions when visiting Moscow for the Olympics in 1980. As I noted earlier, they were fabulous illustrations of Soviet Imperial power (or aspirations) and took in virtually every third world capital on a weekly, monthly or whatever basis. I no longer have them but seem to remember that the timings of domestic flights were all based on Moscow time, even for the Far East……

[fatbear]

My first ever flight was Gatwick to Swansea on Morton Airways in the late 60’s, with the return to Gatwick from Cardiff

[kevin0820]

IN the 70’s I flew ET from Addis to Rome, went Addis, Asmara, Khartom, Cairo, Athens, Rome, spent the whole day, actually fascinating flight!

[EruditeSheep]

One that I remember was United’s RTW flight, eastbound UA2 LHR-DEL-HKG-LAX-JFK-LHR, with UA1 flying in the opposite direction. This used to be a bargain in D class with stop-overs allowable. 767s out of LHR, then 747s for DEL-HKG and onwards to LAX. Later in the 90s I believe they used IAD rather than JFK. As a UA frequent flyer, I sometimes benefitted from U/G to F class and sampled some of the best airline curries I have ever tasted on the LHR-DEL sector.

[LuganoPirate]

Ah good, the thread is still here. A double post here, but for nostalgia’s sake I’d love to fly the old route to New York via Iceland, Greenland, Gander onwards. Can it be done do you think?

[fatbear]

Virgin Atlantic are trying to reintroduce…..

[dutchyankee]

@Brusselsregular – 23/08/2013 08:02 GMT

LOL!!!! Very Good!

[AMcWhirter]

Hello dutchyankee

Correct. US carrier Eastern Airlines instigated the shuttle concept on the US East Coast. BEA adopted the concept later.

As for the IGS flights … it must be remembered that in the Communist era all flights to/from West Berlin could only be operated by airlines of the Allied powers. Lufthansa was banned (by the E German authorities) from landing in Berlin until 1990.

In 1971 I flew with a Pan Am B727 between FRA and THF (Tempelhof). It was before the days of Tegel.

[Hermes1964]

In the 1980s a cheap way to cross Canada was by Pacific Western 737. The catch was the route. Westbound I flew Toronto – Thunder Bay – Brandon – Calgary – Kelowna – Vancouver and eastbound back via Edmonton – Regina and Winnepeg. They were two rather long days I recall with only a bag of nuts on each sector. It was the same crew for the
complete crossing and late in the day on the westbound flight I remember the stewardess cheerily commenting “are you still here!?” as this flight wasn’t generally used for reaching the west coast. What it was to have time on ones hands!

Canuklad – can it still be done?

[canucklad]

Hi Hermes1964

As a wee lad I do recall Dorval –Toronto-Winnipeg- -– Calgary and finally YVR
I loved it….What an adventure ….Up & Down & Up & down & Up again ….Yipeee…
I asked my folks why we didn’t land in Saskatchewan !!
Won’t tell you what my folks answer was…LOL

To answer your question I think you could probably do something similar with Westjet…….

[EruditeSheep]

Not sure whether this would count as a historic route, but I wonder how many correspondents flew on one of the RAF VC10s between Brize Norton and Washington Dulles, sometimes connecting to Belize. I can remember when the RAF bought up what seemed to be most of the world’s remaining VC10s, which were parked around the airfield at BZZ in various liveries. Many of these ended up as sources of spare parts, but several were re-painted with the RAF colours. I flew on these VC10s many times (once in the VIP pod), apart from the one occasion when a late check-in at BZZ meant that a group of us got locked off the flight, resulting in a last-minute rush to LGW to catch the newly-launched Laker Skytrain service to JFK for £99 one-way.

[MontanaKen]

Oh, yes the VC-10! We flew on that for it’s inaugural flight from LHR to IAD sometime in the late 60’s, I think. I was annoyed at BA for charging me some outlandish fee for being one pound overweight (luggage!) and when we took off from London, there were 10 passengers on the plane. No one seemed to know much about the flight in those very early days of the service. I seem to recall that it was a very quiet ride, and I was the only one I knew who had flown a VC-10 for a very long time!

[Olneyflyer01]

I think that this relates to personal experence. My first flight was on a BA Viscount from Belfast to the Isle on Man. This will always stay in my memory. However recently I have flown the BA route from LHR to SYD via SIN. A great experence and I hope to travel it many times in the future.

[Author]

Posts