Good old days
 

Those were the good old days. Pilots back then were men that didn't want to be women or girly men. Pilots all knew who Jimmy Doolittle was. Pilots drank coffee, whiskey, smoked cigars and didn't wear digital watches.

They carried their own suitcases and brain bags like the real men that they were. Pilots didn't bend over into the crash position multiple times each day in front of the passengers at security so that some Gov't agent could probe for tweezers or fingernail clippers or too much toothpaste.

Pilots did not go through the terminal impersonating a caddy pulling a bunch of golf clubs, computers, guitars, and feed bags full of tofu and granola on a sissy-trailer with no hat and granny glasses hanging on a pink string around their pencil neck while talking to their personal trainer on the cell phone!!!

Being an Airline Captain was as good as being the King in a Mel Brooks movie. All the Stewardesses (aka. Flight Attendants) were young, attractive, single women that were proud to be combatants in the sexual revolution. They didn't have to turn sideways, grease up and suck it in to get through the cockpit door. They would blush and say thank you when told that they looked good, instead of filing a sexual harassment claim. Junior Stewardesses shared a room and talked about men..... with no thoughts of substitution.


Passengers wore nice clothes and were polite; they could and didn't smell like a rotting pile of garbage in a jogging suit and flip-flops. Children didn't travel alone, commuting between trailer parks. There were no Mongol hordes asking for a seatbelt extension or a Scotch and grapefruit juice cocktail with a twist.
If the Captain wanted to throw some offensive, ranting jerk off the airplane, it was done without any worries of a lawsuit or getting fired.


Axial flow engines crackled with the sound of freedom and left an impressive black smoke trail like a locomotive burning soft coal. Jet fuel was cheap and once the throttles were pushed up they were left there, after all it was the jet age and the idea was to go fast (run like a lizard on a hardwood floor). Economy cruise was something in the performance book, but no one knew why or where it was. When the clacker went off no one got all tight and scared because Boeing built it out of iron, nothing was going to fall off and that sound had the same effect on real pilots then as Viagra does now for those new age guys.


There was very little plastic and no composites on the airplanes or the Stewardesses' pectoral regions. Airplanes and women had eye pleasing symmetrical curves, not a bunch of ugly vortex generators, ventral fins, winglets, flow diverters, tattoos, rings in their nose, tongues and eyebrows.


Airlines were run by men like C.R. Smith and Juan Tripp who had built their companies virtually from scratch, knew most of their employees by name and were lifetime airline employees themselves...not pseudo financiers and bean counters who flit from one occupation to another for a few bucks, a better parachute or a fancier title, while fervently believing that they are a class of beings unto themselves.




And so it was back then....and never will be again!

Ok grandpa, we get the point, very romantic and macho, ok. Go back to your nap now and let the sissies fly the new planes.

And the wimpy EK pilots who have no balls!

RS, on your next trip, try and buy some sense of humor !!

Nice post ddd - just remember though that some of the sissies will never have a sense of humour:E:}

Don't be hard on RunSick, he's just been living too long in a place where concepts like romance and machismo don't exist. They've been replaced by weak men with too much money who pay slave labour to build their disposable monuments to chest-thumping, who think it's ok to beat their women (as long as it doesn't leave a mark). Where the epitome of male toughness is who can rev their Range Rover the loudest on Al Wasl on a Thursday night. Where the idea of romance is a generic nightclub populated by bored Uzbekistan hookers being leered at by greased-hair impotent Lebostanis.

I doubt he would recognize anything described in the original post.

Great post :D:D:D

......but seems to have struck a raw nerve with a few?
:ok:

:{:{:{:{:{

This article has been posted over a year ago on prune and every where else
 

Hey Tripple D same article was posted on prune in the jet blast section over a year ago with a nice pic ....
old link here

Yes, nice pic !

So.......

The Middle-East forum has become a receptacle for cut-n-paste articles of a general industry nature, but with absolutely no special relevance to the region?

haha, don't get me wrong guys. I was not offended by the post at all. Yes, it is funny (although copy-pasted from somewhere else :yuk:). It's just that it made me remember my grandfather talking about how things where better as they used to be before. The old blah blah blah, I'm sure his grandfather used to say the same:hmm:

I do have the utmost respect for pilots of that bygone era. But not for their "macho, mustached, king and owner of the airline world" attitude, but for their truly great flying skills and airmanship compared to maybe 90% of the pilots nowadays, most probably me included. The thing is that... it's not like the old days anymore.. so cut the crap already, it is boring! And if anyone really gets excited hearing that speech... well, good for you OLD chap, go and watch "the Aviator" for 100th time!

Who gives a s#1t whether it was "cut and pasted" from somewhere else, I enjoyed it. I think that ddd recognizes that the regulars of this section of the forum need a little bit of reflective humor, and need to lighten up a bit.

V

Ohhhh...
 

Just had a deja vu. My first flight ever. Viscount Silverstar Service of British European Airways. Thanks, buddy.

Any mention of one part or the other of the airline being on strike at any one time.

Great Post ddd.

I have great memories from those days, perhaps not quite as glamorous as you put it but, hey, it was good.
I am still active and spend a fair time in the back of your aircraft and what I miss most is that I can no longer send you my card and know that I will get an invite to the cockpit.
Truely sad.

Grand Pa ww

Took a risk about two years ago, had an elderly gent of about eighty, retired RAF Comet navigator on my flight to Sydney, sent a message up that he had flown this route in the late fifties and early sixties, I invited him up to the flight deck and a most entertaining and educational chat with him.

'They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them. LEST WE FORGET'


Sorry , just had to slip that in , as most people these days forget that our freedoms are so readily taken for granted . Modern-day aviation was forged by the lucky ones that survived the Two Great Wars , and they should not be dissed by some of the Modern Heroes who 'grace' these portals today.
I enjoy flying the modern gizmos we have now , but I was lucky - no , VERY LUCKY , to have had the privilege to be in the RHS with some Captains who were mainly Rhodesian Air Force who flew Lancs out of UK on Pathfinder missions for the Bomber Forces ( Google it if you do not know of what I speak ) . They were modest , tough , and very skilled .......never ever heard a 'when-we' out of these guys , they were just happy to be flying safely without someone trying to shoot them down every time they flew.
Shame on you who disparage ' the old days' , one thing a few of us 'oldies' agreed on the other day is how boring airline flying has become.
You are almost lucky that your entire airline career has been conducted behind locked doors with no visitors to the flight deck , because you cannot possibly remember what fun it used to be.

And I used to enjoy visits to the flight deck from young people who were interested in what we did. I also flew with the ex WWII RAF chaps, they had many a good tale to tell.

Great post triple D.