Groundhog Thread Part Deux - P-39 Fantasy and Fetish - The Never Ending Story (Mods take no responsibility for head against wall injuries sustained) (9 Viewers)

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SaparotRob said:
We could use an insightful award.
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I am not saying that the P-39 and P-63 were kept going for that reason, but these things do happen. In the middle of the war in 1941-43 you cant allow engine and plane manufacturers to fold and go out of business, if they do the workforce is gone in a month or two and you cant get it back The A-36 version of the P-51 was concocted for a similar reason, to keep the lines running and the skills in place.
 
Not really putting lipstick on a pig. The P-63 had good combat flying qualities, decent range, and decent altitude capability.

Here's the thing, though ... so did the P-47 and P-51 that were in service. The P-51B/C were introduced around the same time as the P-63 and already had logistics chains in place along with trained mechanics and pilots. The P-63 was pretty good, but nothing that couldn't be done with existing airplanes. So, it was basically not really needed because it offered no new capabilities.

It wasn't bad, just not a step forward from what was already being used and developed.
 
Thumpalumpacus said:
I had a model of their DC-9 copy after they merged with Price back in the 60s. This one was in Braniff colors:

View attachment 636669
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In the days following 9/11, I came home from work one day to find my sons, aged 2 and 4 building block towers and then crashing this into them:

"We're playing Taliban, Dad!" they explained.
"I see." I replied. "Do not play this game at preschool!"
 
SaparotRob said:
I think my first flight was on Eastern; "The wings of Man". I wore a jacket and tie as did all the male passengers. The ladies, in their finest. I don't remember the food being so awful.
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Mine was a Braniff 727 (hence my joke), and yes, in 1974, flying was an occasion and we dressed a little up for it. Neither Dad nor myself sported a tie, but a button-down long-sleeve and some fresh Levi's were de rigeur.

I remember the food being crummy, but that was 47 years ago and who knows what has happened to my neurons in the meantime? The only airliner meal I remember enjoying was a small steak on AA around 1990 or so. Everything else has been dogshit.
 
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My first flight aboard a commercial was when I was 4 years old.
I remember everyone was dressed up nice, my folks and I as well as everyone else.
We were flying from Long Beach to San Francisco and I can't recall the airline we took, but it was a gorgeous silver bird, twin-engine prop job and I do beleive this was where my love for radials officially began!
 
Thumpalumpacus said:
When we returned to Iran from an American vacation in 1976, we flew aboard a Pan Am Clipper
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SaparotRob said:
I think my first flight was on Eastern; "The wings of Man". I wore a jacket and tie as did all the male passengers. The ladies, in their finest. I don't remember the food being so awful.
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Thumpalumpacus said:
Mine was a Braniff 727
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My first commercial was a Northeast Airlines DC3, MPV to BOS, the day after JFK was shot. The whole city was like a funeral parlor, black drapings everywhere.
Don't remember much except the reassuring rumble of a pair of Pratt 1830s, one of which apparently had a little slack in the governor cable, and wouldn't stay in synch. From my front row seat I could see the FO through the open cockpit door as he struggled with the prop controls and the beat vibrations ran back and forth beneath my feet. Of course I was clueless back then, but when I got back to school my physics teacher explained it all to me.
 
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SaparotRob said:
Remember Northwest Airlines? I took a flight with them ONCE and found out why it was called "Northworst".
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My ex wife and BFFL worked for Precision Airlines as a station manager when they were an Eastern Express codeshare in the bad old days of Frank Lorenzo, who crashed the whole Eastern empire. So we got her the necessary ratings and she got back on with Precision as an FO after they started back up as a Northwest Airlink. The whole company felt Northwest as a breath of fresh air after Eastern.
I worked briefly for Eastern as a simulator tech in the mid 70s, and even then, long before Lorenzo, the company culture was downright toxic, unless you were a pilot. The old Eddie Rickenbacker heritage was still alive and well.
 
SaparotRob said:
I haven't heard the name Frank Lorenzo in years. I wasn't really aware of what was going on with them. I was sad to see a legacy airline go.
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For those of a younger vintage, the airline turmoils of the Reagan era are probably ancient history, but some of us remember well. Deregulation in 1978 suddenly made obsolete the business model of the entire legacy airline industry, which fairly quickly devastated the weaker members of the legacy club, made fertile ground for aggressive non-union startups, and fostered the careers of "robber barons" such as Frank Lorenzo, Carl Icahn, and the like.
The business friendly policies of the Reagan years led to the ignoring of antitrust and labor relations laws and a feeding frenzy of union busting, hostile takeovers, and the rise of the robber barons who accumulated great wealth buying ailing companies cheap, selling off assets, busting their unions, and running them as cash cows until they had sucked them dry, then liquidating them.
Frank Lorenzo started off with Trans Texas Airways, then started New York Air, acquired People Express, Continental, and Eastern, all highly leveraged and to be paid for out of the savings he would make on personnel costs. He "synergized" the operation by short term leasing aircraft back and forth between the different operating certificates without bothering to repaint the planes. I remember deadheading on an Eastern flight to pick up one of our planes mid-sequence and finding Eastern, Continental, and People Express emergency cards in the seat pocket of a plane painted in New York Air colors.
Inflight visual traffic ID in the hell hole that was Newark was a horror show. ATC would point out traffic as a "red Eastern", a "white Apple", or a "brown Continental" dependent on which company's livery was operating which company's flight. It got so Frank's pilots would check on frequency with a chuckle in their voices with their airline, flight number, and color acheme.
A longtime friend of mine who was a Continental captain was asked by his mom to get her a pass on his airlne to Honolulu and back. He refused and bought her first class tickets on United instead.
 
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