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Not Herc related, but..........


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This isn\'t really Herc related although I\'m sure there are some Guard & Reserve pilots out there who are also airline pilots; also retired active duty. I just received the followng from a retired DC-10 captain friend of mine. It says a lot about today\'s airlines.

Don R.

In the age of the 707 and the CV-880

Those were the good ole days. Pilots back then were men that didn\'t want to be women or girlymen. 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 TSA inspector 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 unlocked 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 Mongol hordes asking for a \"mu-fuggin\" 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 these 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, tattoos, 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 most 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.

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IT SURE IS HERK RELATED! I remember when being a Tac Airlifter was something! I can see the comparison here. On another note, I sure remember the pre-AFSOC year\'s as well. I concur with our friend Skip, when he has stated numerous times; \"I was in spec op\'s, when spec op\'s was not \'cool\'.\" In the past, we had an \"aura\". We were looked down upon by some, and that was part of our trademark.

Oh the golden year\'s! :laugh: We would take AFR 35-10 and see how far we could get away with the violations......

Kurt

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Along those lines that reminds me of a story I heard from an ex Herk pilot. This guy cross flowed to 135s from a TACC job he had been in. Back in the days when a Herk driver in ACC was a career killer. Anyway he told me there were refueling missions he had been on where only the Boom would know what they were hooking up too. The pilot was left out of the loop. Can you imagine a Herk mission where the Load knew what was in the back but the pilot didn\'t?

Don did you see any of those missions in the -10?

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jbob,

Actually, on the DC-10 freighter, the only time the cockpit crew knew what was in the back was if there was hazmat back there. By the time we got to the airplane, it was usually already loaded & the fire curtain & 9G net were up. Once in a while, just out of curiosity, I\'d ask the load what we were hauling.

Commercial aviation is a whole different world from military flying.

Don R.

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The shame is I am under 50 and I remember the tail end of those days.

The Pan-Am layoffs in \'81 and the Continental strike in \'82 probably signaled the end.

I knew folks who ran the cabin or flew for AA, UAL, Delta and Lufthansa. They all had their airplanes at the field I worked at. And to person, man or woman they all loved their jobs and their company.

Two of our CFI\'s were the first women hired by UAL in 1977(?) to move up front.

In the mid-80\'s a friend mine who had been a Douglas employee for over 50 years said it was over. Boy was he right.

Of course we can all afford to fly now. It has just come with the price of going Greyhound. Passengers are not known as SLC for nothing.

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