The day Braniff shut down I had just landed at my home base, OKC. As we were on final final I noticed a Braniff 727 sitting on a reverse turn off taxiway on the east parallel runway, didn't really think much about it.
There is a hotel on the airport that sits between the two runway. Most of the local pilots would drop by the hotel to have 'post-flight meetings' in the bar. So after we had our aircraft put into the hangar I drove over to the hotel to see if any other pilots were in the bar. As I drove up to the hotel I saw the Braniff 727 was still sitting on the taxiway with the engines running. That I thought was rather curious.
When I walked into the bar I ran into two other crews that had landed just before I had. I asked them if they had noticed the Braniff 727. Neither of the other pilots had so we started taking about other matters. About an hour later a Braniff crew, pilots and flight attendants, still dressed in their uniforms came into the bar, sat down at a table and ordered drinks.
This got our undivided attention. Then we noticed that two of the FAs were crying and the rest of the crew looked decidedly unhappy. Very soon we found out the reason why, Braniff was out of business, no warning, no nothing. They were getting ready to takeoff when they received a message to halt all operations. So they had pulled off of the runway and sat there waiting to be told what the reason was for stopping operations. After finding out they were out of business, they taxied back to the terminal, let the passengers off, shut down the aircraft and went to the hotel.
That was a sad night.