A time when airliners were loud, clunky and brilliant to be aboard

[BonnieLass]

Discovered this bit of nostalgia....Manchester Airport circa 1998

You Tube

A time when airliners sounded proper....and not like hairdryers as they do now

(And a few airlines that are no longer with us too....more's the pity)

[wowzz]

Originally Posted by BonnieLass

Discovered this bit of nostalgia....Manchester Airport circa 1998

https://youtu.be/0cWTkIIA3s0?si=J91ZVaNbQS5v7hj_

A time when airliners sounded proper....and not like hairdryers as they do now

(And a few airlines that are no longer with us too....more's the pity)

Can you be nostalgic after a mere 27 years ? Not denying that the video is of interest, but surely a greater time lapse than 27 years is required before it can be called nostalgic. 50 years perhaps ?

[Alan Baker]

Originally Posted by wowzz

Can you be nostalgic after a mere 27 years ? Not denying that the video is of interest, but surely a greater time lapse than 27 years is required before it can be called nostalgic. 50 years perhaps ?

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

[BonnieLass]

It might seem like only a short time in years, but the majority of the aircraft types and airlines featured in the footage have long since been lost forever....so when you consider it is "only" a couple of decades ago, the fact is that flying on airliners has changed rapidly in a perceivably short space of time. A few of the featured airlines featured have been reincarnated more than once but most have fizzled into nothing, many of them beloved by their regular pax.

It may seem trivial nonsense to some but there are many others who wish the old clunkers that didn't depend on computers as heavily as nowadays were still flying...with a human being making decisions and not a box of microchips in a compartment under the lavatory. The old DC10/MD11 and the L1011 were wonderful (yes they had some computerisation but not to the extent that you have now on aircraft....and trips to the cockpit were fab back then too, truly fascinating watching the various instruments on the panel and listening to how they worked and what they did - I suspect if cockpit visits were ever going to be allowed now, it would be like being sat in a computer game, sterile and little imput from the crew)

[Planemike]

Oh, I think this one would count....Short 340/360 .......!!!

[ShyTorque]

Originally Posted by Alan Baker

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

I agree. It’s a thing of the past.

[PAXboy]

I miss the big noise. I do like to hear the engines spin up for departure - but need to abandon these derated take offs!

[Mr Mac]

I think the noise of 707/ VC10/DC8 etc was more dramatic not to mention the exhaust smoke. Watching something like a 707 /DC 8 climb out on a still day the exhaust almost made them look steam powered. Only thing like it now I think would be a B52 though others may have other examples.

Cheers
Mr Mac

[treadigraph]

Originally Posted by wowzz

Can you be nostalgic after a mere 27 years ? Not denying that the video is of interest, but surely a greater time lapse than 27 years is required before it can be called nostalgic. 50 years perhaps ?

Nostalgia isn't delineated by a specific length of time, it is a fondness or longing for something that is past, that no longer exists or happens, whether a year, a decade or a century ago.

[fdcg27]

Should we also be nostalgic about the serious accident rate back in the day?
Take a look at the difference in the number of air carrier fatal accidents in 1998 versus 2024.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have flown on the B707, B727 and even a flight on a BAC 1-11 and one on a CV440.
It was also a lot more fun to spot back in the day, with the diversity of airliners and airlines operating back in the seventies.
OTOH, there were many more serious accidents with far less traffic than we have today.
Incidentally, as compared to a 707 or DC-8, the L-1011 and the DC-10 were virtually silent.

[justapax]

Originally Posted by fdcg27

Should we also be nostalgic about the serious accident rate back in the day?
Take a look at the difference in the number of air carrier fatal accidents in 1998 versus 2024.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have flown on the B707, B727 and even a flight on a BAC 1-11 and one on a CV440.
It was also a lot more fun to spot back in the day, with the diversity of airliners and airlines operating back in the seventies.
OTOH, there were many more serious accidents with far less traffic than we have today.
Incidentally, as compared to a 707 or DC-8, the L-1011 and the DC-10 were virtually silent.

Does anyone remember when a booth at London (Heathrow) Aeroport used to sell flight insurance, so that if you were in a plane that crashed, your relatives would cash in?

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by Justapax1

Does anyone remember when a booth at London (Heathrow) Aeroport used to sell flight insurance, so that if you were in a plane that crashed, your relatives would cash in?

A crucial part of the plot of Arthur Hailey's "Airport" novel, albeit not at Heathrow.

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted by Justapax1

Does anyone remember when a booth at London (Heathrow) Aeroport used to sell flight insurance, so that if you were in a plane that crashed, your relatives would cash in?

You saw vending machines selling travel insurance at every US airport I visited back in the day.
Self-serve luggage lockers too.
There was an American who purchased insurance on his mother and sent her off on a United DC-6 with a wrapped gift in her luggage that was actually a bomb. It exploded in flight and took down the aircraft with mother and forty four other passengers.
Through good forensic and investigatory work by the FBI, he was caught and convicted and went to prison.

[BonnieLass]

Originally Posted by fdcg27

You saw vending machines selling travel insurance at every US airport I visited back in the day.
Self-serve luggage lockers too.
There was an American who purchased insurance on his mother and sent her off on a United DC-6 with a wrapped gift in her luggage that was actually a bomb. It exploded in flight and took down the aircraft with mother and forty four other passengers.
Through good forensic and investigatory work by the FBI, he was caught and convicted and went to prison.

Wasn't that scenario the base plot for the original Airport film (the one with the 707 that had a crack running almost entirely around the tail after a briefcase bomb went off in the rear toilet and Patroni had to clear another aircraft off the runway that was stuck in the snow to allow the bombed aircraft to land....and he managed it all whilst chewing a cigar in true Hollywood fashion?)

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted by BonnieLass

Wasn't that scenario the base plot for the original Airport film (the one with the 707 that had a crack running almost entirely around the tail after a briefcase bomb went off in the rear toilet and Patroni had to clear another aircraft off the runway that was stuck in the snow to allow the bombed aircraft to land....and he managed it all whilst chewing a cigar in true Hollywood fashion?)

That I do not know and if I saw the movie it was so long ago that I don't recall it. A classic of the silly B movie genre.

You're probably right, though and the actual event was probably the inspiration for the novel upon which the screenplay was based. I do recall reading the novel and finding it not very good.

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by BonnieLass

Wasn't that scenario the base plot for the original Airport film

Do try to keep up.

[JEM60]

I reckon the film was pretty good, so there!.

[eckhard]

Nostalgia isn't delineated by a specific length of time, it is a fondness or longing for something that is past, that no longer exists or happens, whether a year, a decade or a century ago.

Surely it must relate to one’s personal experiences and memories?
I certainly feel a nostalgia for visits that I made to the USA in the 1960s, but can’t say the same about the 1950s, much as I might think I would have enjoyed it then.

[treadigraph]

Originally Posted by eckhard

Surely it must relate to one’s personal experiences and memories?

Absolutely but also perhaps to things you haven't experienced and wish you had... for example as someone born in 1964, I was lucky enough to experience the heyday of the earlier generation of jet transports but only the embers of the iconic piston airliners, something I wish I could have seen more of. I'd love to have been around ten or fifteen years earlier I guess... or be able to go back.

I realise that commercial aviation is infinitely safer now and yet... and yet...

(Fifty years ago I could look up and easily tell a 707 from a DC-8 or a Cv990, a 1-11 from a DC-9, a Tu-134 or an F-28, a Trident from a 727, a DC-10 from a TriStar... Maybe 20 common passenger jets, all readily identifiable at 8000'. Now it's mostly a big twin or a little twin and picking out the salient differences between makes/models is harder from down below - though as a decades long reformed actual "spotter" while not out of touch, I'm obviously well out of practice!)

[pax britanica]

Treadigraph- wellI am a bit older than you -born 1954 so i did see alot of piston engined stuff- and i lived right next to LHR when it had four working runways . So i consider myself lucky as an enthusiast having seen airliner development to the point that its all just a big/giant 737 these days.

Anyway the main point of my post was that like you I could exactly as you did instantly identify everything -in some cases even from just the noise-Coronados/990s especially odd sounding .

Living in the South west now I still cannot give up looking at contrails although over my way the predominant flights are KLM to the Caribbean and S America barely ever anything BA very occasionally a 777 or 350 descending through about 17000 above Bath inbound to LHR