I still enjoy the ocasional Virgin/QFlink flights where I have to go out on the tarmac and climb the stairs.
Yes yet another thing about the way we were, back in the good olde days.
While I am sure most pax prefer the aerobridges, especially if the weather is not so good, it spoilt it quite a bit for us that handled the aircraft when they were introduced, never got to see the pax as much, just like you were working the freight line.
I will never forget one day, before aerobridges, was turning around a B727 and it had a minor engine fault on #1 engine, in order to try and minimise any delay I told operations to begin loading pax.
The quickest and easiest way to do the job was I got one of the porters to put in a set of mobile stairs into the rear of the engine pylon.
Funny thing happened, you know how you can tell sometimes if you are being watched, while I was working on the engine I looked up and there was some 5 or 6 pax watching me, they had come up the mobile steps instead of the rear ventral stairs.
Yes, the way we were...........
