I just read an article about what a hard time all the airlines are having because everyone is locked-down and no one is traveling. I got to thinking…. for a lot of years, it seemed like I pretty much lived on airplanes. Now, even if we weren’t all locked down, I wouldn’t particularly like to fly. I guess there are a number of reasons, but air travel probably won’t ever return to what I refer to as the “good old days.”
I was trying to remember how many different airlines I’d flown on over the years… some are still around, a lot are not, some — if they are still around — you couldn’t pay me enough to get on one of their “airplanes.”
Off the top of my head, I remember flying Air France, Air India, Garuda, Allegheny, JAL, KLM, Lufthansa, Cathy Pacific, British Airways, Egypt Air, Nepal Airways, Emirates, Philippine Airlines, Quantas, SAS, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, Virgin Atlantic, China Airlines, Turkish Airlines, American Airlines, Aeroflot, Delta, TWA, Frontier, Air Mali, Kenyan Air, Tanzania Airways, Iberia, Korean Air, Ethiopian Air, Air America, Air Vietnam — I’m sure I left out some of my “favorites.” The memory just isn’t what it used to be.
Some of my experiences on various flight are memorable, to say the least. Now they seem funny and make for a good story, but when they happened, they were irritating and inconvenient — I don’t remember them being scary at the time, but maybe they should have been.
Two of us flew out of Phnom Penh on Cambodian Air one time — it was a small plane with just a few people on board and we sat together in the back of the plane. We were made to move… we had to sit where they placed us, spaced out in the cabin. They told us that they had to “distribute the load” so the plane could take off.
I sat in the “co-pilot” seat on an Air America flight out of Danang, Vietnam and we had to fly “around” Monkey mountain because we couldn’t gain enough altitude to make it over the top.
Lots of airlines allowed the passengers to bring animals on board — in Vietnam, I regularly sat with chickens and ducks and pigs next to me on Air Vietnam… and that was one of the better airlines, believe it or not. An airline in Turkey (Turkish Hava Yolari) known by their initials, THY got the reputation that THY stood for “The Hate You.” Other airlines earned similar reputations — Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) came to mean “Pray It Arrives.” I can remember a couple that we referred to as TACA — Take a Chance Airlines. When flying Aeroflot, we often called it Aeroflop.
I only flew Air Mali a couple of times… the first time I flew one of their planes, there was a crack in the floor by my seat that you could see the ground through. Luckily, they didn’t fly very high, I’m sure the cabin couldn’t be pressurized. On both my Air Mali flights, all the passengers cheered and applauded when we landed — apparently they all had the same opinion of Air Mali that I did. When I was in Liberia, an Air Mali flight on it’s way to Monrovia, lost an engine, and all the passengers jumped out. The plane did manage to land safely, but the passengers were all killed.
One story that I’ve heard several times involved Nigerian Air. The flight was apparently oversold in Lagos — they made the passengers run out to the tarmac and then around the plane. The first passengers that made it back to the mobile stairs, were allowed to board. I’m not sure this is a true story, but I’ve heard it a few times from unrelated sources.
So after being on lots and lots of airplanes flown by lots of airlines, I guess I don’t really have a favorite airline — I have a few least favorite airlines and I do have some favorite flights or trips… maybe another good topic for discussion one of these days.
It would be nice if air travel got back to being as much fun as it was when I was young — the prevalent attitude then was that a good landing was one you could walk away from; a great landing was one after which they could use the plane again….
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