Originally Posted by
Wycombe
I believe the US scheme to which you refer is known as "Space A" (Space Available)..
I was once at Dover AFB and there was an LED ticker running continually in departures that showed space available anywhere on the US network.
You might want to get to Fairchild but saw there was a flight to Riverside. If you thought you had a better chance of a flight from Riverside to fairchild then you could grab that one or wait for a better offer.
Once, in Kef, there was an ex-USAAF airman. He had hitched in from Thule I think but there were no onward flights to Europe. He was becoming a regular lounge lizard in the O-club and a right RPITA to the P3 guys. They invoked the RAF-MAC agreement and we flew him to UK in a Nimrod.
We explained the flight would take 9 hours which he thought was much longer than it took in a B25. Several hours into the flight and still 300 miles from Iceland the message had still not sunk in.
Eventually he was driven to the main gate at ISK and pointed in the direction of the station.
