SWA or DAL?

[skywiz]

All,
Thanks for your input. Its nice when people can provide valuble info on this forum. I admit I still have some time to figure things out, but every little bit on information helps! I look forward to joining your ranks!

Cheers,
SW

 

[General Lee]

General,

I know it would please you and the rest of the Anti SWA tools to see us go down in flames, but your gloating is premature.

I heard the same stuff from you guys during the BK. It's all GOOD. Anyway, I don't see you going down in flames, rather I see a very turbulent period if you don't handle these next couple years right. The rest of us have gone through this already. Merging lists is NEVER fun. Everyone has expectations, and usually they are never met unless you are the number one pilot on the combined list. What you say now and how you act will be remembered. Arbitration is good because it gives BOTH sides someone to blame, and not each other. Eventually, you will be ONE team, and even though there will be hard feelings abound for years, and some people will never let it go, you all will be one team. Next time you think about writing something slamming your future brothers on FI or any website, just pause and maybe think about it. As far as my own slams, I think about each one, but overall, I LOVE ALL OF YOU GUYS.


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[General Lee]

So you only take your family to destinations that Delta flies? Or do you sometimes use the flight benefits on other carriers that Delta provides to its employees?

I completely understand that the cost for a Delta employee and family flying on Delta is going to be cheaper than a SWA employee and family flying on Delta. My point is that just because your airline doesn't fly to a particular location doesn't prohibit you from non-reving there.

Delta pretty much goes everywhere. It helps to have a Delta badge. Sure, you can nonrev via another airline, but if you get stuck the Delta badge helps, especailly getting on another SkyTeam member airline too. That is true WORLD coverage. But I have to admit, our West Texas coverage isn't great. ELP via mainline and RJs, and LBB via RJs (thank gawd), and that's it. Oh well......


Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[ivauir]

I heard the same stuff from you guys during the BK.

You never heard it from me.

Next time you think about writing something slamming your future brothers on FI or any website,

Not how I roll. Too bad you can't maintain the same code.

 

[niners]

Delta pretty much goes everywhere. It helps to have a Delta badge. Sure, you can nonrev via another airline, but if you get stuck the Delta badge helps, especailly getting on another SkyTeam member airline too. That is true WORLD coverage. But I have to admit, our West Texas coverage isn't great. ELP via mainline and RJs, and LBB via RJs (thank gawd), and that's it. Oh well......


Bye Bye---General Lee

Just an outsider opinion, but I would rather overnight in LBB with a SWA F/A then Paris with a DAL F/A....

 

[Full of LUV]

Just an outsider opinion, but I would rather overnight in LBB with a SWA F/A then Paris with a DAL F/A....

Male or female F/A? Ya know they roll quite differently in LBB than Paris....

If your looking for easy pickings F/A's, stay at the regionals, they tend to have a younger, more vulnerable crop.

Congrats, you've fulfilled the pilot stereotype required post for the day.

 

[niners]

Male or female F/A? Ya know they roll quite differently in LBB than Paris....

If your looking for easy pickings F/A's, stay at the regionals, they tend to have a younger, more vulnerable crop.

Congrats, you've fulfilled the pilot stereotype required post for the day.

I left the regionals a while ago. And for the record, I already have one of the SWA F/A'S (female).

I do what I can....

 

[canyonblue]

I recently flew with a flight attendant who's grandmother works at delta.

 

[RedDogC130]

here is a llink to the oldest flight attendants
http://www.departures.com/articles/come-fly-with-me

 

[RedDogC130]

Since the early days of air travel, flight attendants have provided service, safety, and a dash of glamour. Mark Ellwood meets six who’ve worked the friendly skies long enough to see it all.
Remember when flying still felt stylish, adventurous, even (dare we say it) fun? These six flight attendants do. They’re the Number Ones, specially designated by their airlines for having the most years of service. This group worked during aviation’s golden age—with its fur-coated passengers, cocktail bars, and autograph-seeking kids—through the eighties travel boom and into the much scarier skies of post-9/11. They were around when flight attendants were still called stewardesses, wore high heels and designer dresses, and carried hatboxes. It wasn’t all enchanting, of course, considering the marriage bans, leg inspections, and weight checks. But, as 40-year-veteran Mimi Halperin recalls, “We were meeting a more glamorous standard.” Between them, these six have logged nearly 300 years of flying time, and they’re still going. These are their stories.
Norma Heape, 69

Los Angeles, California
50 years of flying: Continental Airlines

When I was 23 I traveled around the world, and it opened my eyes so wide I couldn’t close them. I went to Le Cordon Bleu school in Paris, lived for a short time in Hong Kong, and did some work as a model before joining Continental.
We didn’t do a whole lot of training back then. They expected you to know how to walk and talk, then gave you information about the FAA. In the fifties we didn’t have layover time. At Chicago’s Midway Airport, we’d get driven from the plane directly to the hotel, put on lipstick downstairs, and go have dinner with the hotel manager. It was very glamorous—people would ask me for autographs at the airport.
When I first started, I so wanted to look like the first-class passengers. Something Continental did that really attracted me was that it got away from the military-looking uniforms. We wore red velvet berets and V-neck fitted dresses and carried hatboxes as opposed to luggage. It gave us the appearance of being models. Four or five years down the road, Rudy Gernreich did a uniform for us—a black, fitted long-sleeve dress with a Majorca pearl necklace. The idea was that you could take off your wings and jacket and go out for dinner.
Continental had a lot of celebrity passengers. Mr. Six [the CEO and president from 1938 to 1980] was married to Ethel Merman, and she brought the showbiz people. My first flight was to Chicago on a 707 not long after they had married, and she was onboard singing Broadway tunes to the whole cabin—“Chicago, Chicago…” Years later I helped Muhammad Ali sign autographs. And once Tony Martin kissed my hand when he got off the plane.
President Truman was on one flight out of Kansas City. A person across the aisle asked him about the first thing he did after leaving the Oval Office and going home to Missouri. “The first thing I did?” he said. “I unpacked.” Truman was down-to-earth and personable but not very funny.
The longest flight over water back in the early sixties was to Honolulu from the West Coast on a MAC flight—military aircraft command. During the Vietnam War the government needed more planes to transport GIs, so it contacted the airlines. I was one of 17 who volunteered and was based in Los Angeles, Honolulu, and the Philippines. I did it for four years.
I flew the inaugural flight from Newark to Beijing and also to Milan and Santiago, Chile. I’m hoping to be on the one to Shanghai in 2009, if I can still walk and talk. I’ve been with Continental for 50 years and never missed a day of work.
Marlene Evans, 71

Estes Park, Colorado
51 years of flying: Pacific Northern, Western, and Delta Airlines

In 1956 I was working for a mortgage company. I’ll never forget: My boss, Mr. Ruby, said to me, “Why don’t you go get a job with the airlines?” because I couldn’t spell and I talked all the time. He did me the biggest favor of my whole life.
It was called Stewardess College then. I was rejected by American Airlines because of a separation in my teeth—I was heartbroken. So I went and had my teeth fixed. I’d just turned 20.
My first job was with Pacific Northern Airlines. I was based in Anchorage and flew intra-Alaska routes. The passengers wore big mukluks, fishing clothes, and parkas. Meanwhile, I was in high heels and white gloves. A dogsled met our flights and we couldn’t start the engines until the sled had gone because it would upset the huskies.
I served Johnny Carson and President Kennedy when he was running for office. My favorite was Lassie—though he was actually the no. 2 dog, as the no. 1 didn’t travel. He had a pair of first-class seats but lay down on the floor.
My uniform when I started was gray with a white blouse and black shoes. But when I worked for Western Airlines [later taken over by Delta] I wore a sherbet-orange polyester jumper and a blouse with big orange polka dots and a huge bow. With white patent-leather shoes! Now my kids say, “You wore that?”
We wanted to wear slacks, but Mr. Arthur Woodley, our president in the late fifties, said to me, “If I had wanted someone to wear pants, I would have hired men.” And we didn’t serve liquor either because, he said, “This is a family airline.”
I wasn’t married, but until the late sixties a lot of flight attendants put their wedding rings in their bras when working. They hid pregnancies and had dear “nieces” and “nephews.” Even after marriages were allowed, if your husband was a pilot, you had to quit.
Once, in the sixties, an entertainer of sorts was on my flight to Seattle. We didn’t know it, but under her coat she had a boa constrictor she’d acquired for her act. At some point she got up and said, “My snake is gone!” They found it two weeks later, wrapped around some pipes, still alive. I had visions of it coming out of the overhead bins.
Robert Reardon, 83

St. Paul, Minnesota
56 years of flying: Northwest Airlines

They just didn’t hire everybody back in the early fifties—they said they rejected nine out of ten applicants. I knew one girl who was made to have a tooth pulled and have a bridge put in. The standard has gone way down. It used to be a status job, but since we came out of bankruptcy and they cut salaries so much, they’re beating the bushes for new people.
Northwest began hiring male flight attendants because it sold liquor, something the other airlines didn’t do. At that time people drank more than they do now. If you have both men and women you can handle any problem, and we guaranteed one man on each Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, which was an all-first-class aircraft.
When I started out, each Stratocruiser had a lounge downstairs with 14 seats. We served premixed martinis and Manhattans and any gin, bourbon, Scotch, rye whiskey. It was just like a regular cocktail lounge. There was a table where people always played poker— I don’t know if it was legal or not. Yes, it was smoky, but it didn’t bother me.
Initially the Stratocruiser had 67 seats, but then the airline realized it could use the lounge area for passenger seats, too. Ultimately it crammed in 83 seats by cutting the size of the bathrooms. At first it had great big men’s and women’s rooms—you never had to wait.
We all signed an agreement saying we’d never gain weight, and I never have. I weighed 162 pounds when I was hired; I’m 160 now. The men didn’t have weigh-ins like the women did. We had one supervisor who would call in these poor girls, ordering them “Gain a pound! Lose a pound!”
Our training lasted six weeks. The girls had to go through one additional week, when the Helen O’Connell modeling school came in and taught them how to apply makeup and things. But we were very lax about a lot of things back then, and safety training is better now.
Male flight attendants dressed just like the pilots, almost identical. The airline was strict as far as appearance went—we weren’t allowed facial hair, though they’d make an exception for a mustache. Haircuts couldn’t come over the collar. And the passengers all dressed as they would to go shopping: suits and ties for the men.
As long as I feel all right and can do the job, I’ll keep on doing it. I didn’t mean to turn 83—it just happened.