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I was looking at the history of Lockheed’s Constellation. What a beautiful and clean design. The inside looks like a hotel lobby. Aren’t there enough aviation buffs who would fly one of these both for fun and business? This is no different than riding on the Orient Express.
My first jet flight was on a 707. It is remarkable that a 707 could taxi TODAY and most people would think it is just another jet plane ready to board passengers. You can’t say that about cars, can you.
For commercial flights, most people want to get their destinations quickly with more modern amenities.
Yes, but there are aviation buffs who just like to fly the plane. I know I would. Destination is not particularly important. Like a cruise ship to nowhere.
Buffalo Airways, in Canada's North West Territory, has regular passenger service using DC-3's. Seems expensive to have these birds up in the air though.
$205 CDN for a one way, 45 minute flight.
Back in the 80's and early 90's, I flew out of MIA and FLL a lot. There were still more than a few freight carriers flying Beech 18s, Connies, DC-3s 6's and 7's, Convairs, C-46's etc. There were even a few KC-97s in MIA for years. I'm not sure if they actually flew them, but they weren't in Corrosion Corner, moved around and appeared serviceable.
Even back then, I always questioned the viability of using these airplanes for that kind of service, mainly because the sheer complexity of the engines, coupled with dwindling parts support, less "corporate" knowledge required to run and service them, and the cost of avgas vs. jet a, had to make them difficult to keep running.
I guess the airframes were cheap enough to acquire that it offset the operating costs somewhat.
After witnessing more than a few, I used to joke (well, kinda) that engine failures were on their "normal" takeoff checklists!
We'd take off 3 or 4 airplanes behind them in MIA going the same direction (I also used to joke that they would rotate by putting the gear up), and as we were climbing through 5-6k (in a BE-99), MIA would tell us about DC-7 traffic ahead and below us, climbing out of 500 feet. They would baby the engines in the early part of the flight by keeping the power setting pulled back a bit, and the angle of climb very low, to keep the most airflow over them.
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