My time was late 1960's and early 1970's. Eastern flew the Press Charters in the 1972 campaign. WHBM is right about nav equipment on the domestic airlines at that time. Col. Albertazie on Air Force One was shocked to find that our new DC8-63 had only VOR navigation and Loran (for Bermuda and San Juan work). It was not until EAL started doing MAC charters with the DC8-63 that we fitted two of them with Doppler nav.
As an aside, I might mention that on an earlier press charter to Denver in a DC8-61 in the sixties, we found, on the takeoff on the return flight back to Andrews AFB that the airplane didn't want to unstick and used excessive runway. At Andrews we found the Press boys had loaded up the baggage compartments with many cases of Coors Beer which was unobtainable back East at that time. The flight crew was unaware of that little matter and with Denver altitude and a warm day it became interesting to see the runway length markers going by. We did get off just short of making the runway numbers. The DC8-61 was not a lively performer compared to the -63 for sure.