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"The Good Old Days"

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airbrush

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 6, 2001
Posts
146
In the Age of the 707....


Those were the good ole days. Pilots back then were men that
didn't want to be women or girly men. Pilots all knew who
Jimmy Doolittle was. Pilots drank coffee, whiskey, smoked
cigars and didn't wear digital watches.

They carried their own suitcases and brain bags like the
real men that they were. Pilots didn't bend over into the
crash position multiple times each day in front of the
passengers at security so that some Gov't agent could probe
for tweezers or fingernail clippers or too much toothpaste.

Pilots did not go through the terminal impersonating a caddy
pulling a bunch of golf clubs, computers, guitars, and feed
bags full of tofu and granola on a sissy-trailer with no hat
and granny glasses hanging on a pink string around their
pencil neck while talking to their personal trainer on the
cell phone!!!

Being an Airline Captain was as good as being the King in a
Mel Brooks movie. All the Stewardesses (aka. Flight
Attendants) were young, attractive, single women that were
proud to be combatants in the sexual revolution. They didn't
have to turn sideways, grease up and suck it in to get
through the cockpit door. They would blush and say thank you
when told that they looked good, instead of filing a sexual
harassment claim. Junior Stewardesses shared a room and
talked about men.... with no thoughts of substitution.

Passengers wore nice clothes and were polite, they could
speak AND understand English. They didn't speak gibberish or
listen to loud gangsta rap on their IPods. They bathed and
didn't smell like a rotting pile of garbage in a jogging
suit and flip-flops. Children didn't travel alone, commuting
between trailer parks. There were no mongolhordes asking for
a seatbelt extension or a Scotch and grapefruit juice
cocktail with a twist.

If the Captain wanted to throw some offensive, ranting jerk
off the airplane, it was done without any worries of a
lawsuit or getting fired.

Axial flow engines crackled with the sound of freedom and
left an impressive black smoke trail like a locomotive
burning soft coal. Jet fuel was cheap and once the throttles
were pushed up they were left there, after all it was the
jet age and the idea was to go fast (run like a lizard on a
hardwood floor). Economy cruise was something in the
performance book, but no one knew why or where it was. When
the clacker went off no one got all tight and scared because
Boeing built it out of iron, nothing was going to fall off
and that sound had the same effect on real pilots then as
Viagra does now for those new age guys.

There was very little plastic and no composites on the
airplanes or the Stewardesses' pectoral regions. Airplanes
and women had eye pleasing symmetrical curves, not a bunch
of ugly vortex generators, ventral fins, winglets, flow
diverters, tatoos, rings in their nose, tongues and
eyebrows.

Airlines were run by men like C.R. Smith and Juan Trippe who
had built their companies virtually from scratch, knew many
of their employees by name and were lifetime airline
employees themselves...not pseudo financiers and bean
counters who flit from one occupation to another for a few
bucks, a better parachute or a fancier title, while
fervently believing that they are a class of beings unto
themselves.

And so it was back then....and never will be again!
 
Look around, this entire country has gone to crap. Between the hippies and generation ME, this place is barely fit for the dogs and at this pace in about 2 more generations won't be fit for the flies.
 
Look around, this entire country has gone to crap. Between the hippies and generation ME, this place is barely fit for the dogs and at this pace in about 2 more generations won't be fit for the flies.

So, you'll be moving to Panama soon?
 
"Stay thirsty my friends!"
 
And pilots were pilots because they liked flying airplanes, when they were not flying airplanes they hung around the airport and talked about flying airplanes. F/O's lived on starvation wages. Pilots made a modest living until the introduction of Jets which moved the airlines into cash cows they became in the 60's under regulation.
 
...........and then deregulation happened. Even your most hard lined republican pilot has to admit that taking away regulation made this job less of what it once was.
 
...........and then deregulation happened. Even your most hard lined republican pilot has to admit that taking away regulation made this job less of what it once was.

Deregulation was pushed by Ted Kennedy and signed into law by Jimmy Carter. Neither of which have sterling Republican credentials. Deregulation wasn't a Republican or even a bipartisan issue. It was a Democrat issue with the purpose of bringing down air fares and making air travel more available to their constituents. It worked. But we're still suffering from the unintended consequences.
 
Yep-

Deregulation wrecked the entire industry-no doubt.

Here is one of the head guys responsible "gloating" (no, seriously-he actually describes himself as "gloating") over deregulation and how it saved everyone a bunch of money.

-Thanks again, Carter-Why don't you go and give Chavez another big hug?

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2007-07-23-alfred-kahn_N.htm

The only guys who made out well under de-regulation are managers.. Each and every airline pays hundreds of millions to their board and upper mgmt. while stockholders and employees are raped time and time again.
 
The Good Old Days. I'd love to get back to bigger airplanes and less CRJ's. This would also help the traffic problem around the bigger cities.

I'd love to see it!
 
You forgot one. The good old days.... when whiny pilots didn't lament about the "good old days" anonymously on internet message boards. How very "old school" of you.
 
While there were indeed some high points to regulation, there were also some low points. FedEx had to fly 5 Falcons wing tip to wing tip to LAX because of regulation. That just isn't efficient.

Once deregulation happened, 1 B-727 took care of the FedEx Falcon parade and allowed for rapid growth.
 
Deregulation was pushed by Ted Kennedy and signed into law by Jimmy Carter. Neither of which have sterling Republican credentials. Deregulation wasn't a Republican or even a bipartisan issue. It was a Democrat issue with the purpose of bringing down air fares and making air travel more available to their constituents. It worked. But we're still suffering from the unintended consequences.
...and Ted Kennedy was heavily endorsed by who?

Anyone?


Anyone?


That's right....


ALPA
 
Almost forgot, CRJ. I read that article you posted when it first came out a few months back. When that miserable old fart croaks, I will make it a quest to find out where he's buried and piss on his grave.

Sign me up!

What a complete assbag that old man is... He is actually proud of completely wrecking the industry and ensuring decades of losses for employees, investors, and anyone else dumb enough to be associated wih any airline.

-Seriously-are $59 fares to Fresno really worth all the wreckage these morons wrought? Just imagine what all the airlines have lost since this old gasbag pushing deregulation through congress.....

-Actually gloating-amazing!
 
FYI....the original post is not not mine. I simply found it and decided to post it without comment. I'm not old enough to have been there, and my flying is purely for fun; even my airline dispatch days may be over the way it looks. But I thought I'd put it out there just for fun....I'm sure those days were just like any other time, a mix of good and bad, remembered as we wish.
 
I don't get warm fuzzies about the airlines, old or new. What is vanishing from the world are the old-school FBOs with cut-shirt-tails on the wall next to yellowing polaroids of first solos. Teenagers obsess on Facebook and buy anything they want from Ebay and Craigslist. They certainly aren't out at the airport washing planes for rides. The steamgauge trainers are finally reaching the end of their lives along with the piston twins. A MILLION BUCKS for a piston Baron! The classic flight school is vanishing.

I've read that a third of all operating flight schools have vanished since 9/11. Remember the styrofoam cup compass? Remember that Sporty's C152 panel poster with the ugly brown plastic Cessna used? I have a framed one. Someday I will retire and recreate an old flight school, right down to the cheesy toy cardboard plane with the moveable control surfaces. I might even use old Jepp hoods for IFR. No glass, no retracts, no turbos. Real live working ADFs!

Maybe this is a thread segway, but this part of our heritage is vanishing right before our eyes. I'm still a CFI. I will always be a CFI. I hate to see it go.
 
A few less flight schools/puppy mills could'nt hurt.
 
phr8dawg....

I hear you. I learned to fly in the mid '70s at a flying club that was pretty much just like you described....lots of shirttails hanging all around the room, all of the old low-tech learning devices (I remember when we got our first desktop flight simulator...the ATC 510, I think? It was quite a sensation!). Although we can't do much to stop the march of technology (and should we try?), maybe the Sport Pilot certificate will help keep some of that "fly just for the sake of flying" spirit alive. I gave up my dream of flying professionally many years ago (thankfully, before investing lots of $$$), and realized that I was happiest when things were as simple as possible. Give me a blue sky, some green grass, and a yellow J-3 with the door open and leave me alone....I'll be back in an hour, will never climb above 500 feet, and will be smiling for days.
On the other hand, I was rereading Richard Bach's "Nothing By Chance" recently, as he recounts barnstorming aroung the midwest in the 1960s. Even THEN he was lamenting about the planes sitting around unused, the lack of activity at the small airports, and worried about the future of general aviation. I don't want to see us go the way of Europe, but maybe things will still turn out OK.
When you start that FBO, let me know. I'd love to drop by....
 
Someday I will retire and recreate an old flight school, right down to the cheesy toy cardboard plane with the moveable control surfaces. I might even use old Jepp hoods for IFR. No glass, no retracts, no turbos. Real live working ADFs!

Maybe this is a thread segway, but this part of our heritage is vanishing right before our eyes. I'm still a CFI. I will always be a CFI. I hate to see it go.

Don't leave out the ripped screen door, a dog with an infected ear, and some dead flys. :)
 

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