Old airlines

I completed my LOFT tonight. That finishes the training I have to do prior to going out to fly the line. I do have another simulator session tomorrow night seat filling for another (identical) LOFT, but my paperwork is already done. So that’s all good news.

Aloha Airlines filed for bankruptcy 10 days ago. Today, they announced they’ll halt passenger service tomorrow. They’ve been in business over 60 years. Yet another good old airline goes out of business. It’s a sad thing to see…

And in the 60+ category, World Airways celebrated its 60th anniversary a couple days ago. Not too many airlines have been in business that long (one less now) and World is the last of the ‘original’ supplemental air carriers still operating. The celebration was held in Atlanta, home of Delta Airlines, another good old airline. In the slightly humorous category, apparently there’s a bit of longevity complex going around. After all, World has only been around 60 years, whereas Delta has been around for 75 years. Like, wow… hah!

I don’t really know what it’s like to work for Delta, though I spent over four years working for one of the Delta Connection carriers. We were bought by Delta while I worked there (they’re still owned by Delta), but it didn’t really feel like working for Delta proper. That company (Comair) celebrated its 20th anniversary while I worked there.

Tonight I had dinner with a check engineer (the flight engineers have their own checks) who was hired at World around the time it had its 20th anniversary. He worked for World while Ed Daly was still around. He was at the 60th anniversary bash and said that Ed’s granddaughter showed up. He introduced himself to her and told her, “you know, your grandfather personally fired me.” She replied, “just once?”

The history here is pretty colorful and one of the fun things about being here now is that there are still a few people around who have been here for 40ish years and experienced a lot of the colorful parts first hand. I love hearing the stories about World during the years when I was not yet even alive. World (the airline, and the place) was different back then… in some respects.

This check engineer had ‘only’ been fired twice (in ~40 years), which is nowhere near the record. He told the story about one of our former dispatchers, who later became the head of dispatch (I recognized the name but never met him). He held the all-time record for getting fired from World. Apparently Ed Daly would call fairly regularly to see how things were going. When this guy, Walt, was fairly new, Ed called asking about an airplane. After about 4 calls with bad news (it’s broke, it’s not moving), he fired him over the phone. When Walt didn’t show up the next night for his shift, his boss called and asked where he was. He said “Ed Daly fired me last night.” His boss said, “Bull####!” That was the first of the 32 times he got fired…

I’m way behind…. 😉

V-