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I flew on HP (America West) a number of times in the early and mid 90's between LA or Ontario and Las Vegas. So the flights were always short. I usually enjoyed them. At least when they were still their 'original' brand. But after they emerged from BK in around '95 or '96 and changed to the green and orange color scheme, things went downhill fast. The original 'burgundy/blue' America West was a pleasant airline to take. Following the rebrand, they began to grow. And get incredibly sloppy, cocky, and arrogant. The last flight I took on them was in '99-also LAX-LAS. Even though the then sparkling brand new Airbus 319 jet we took was really nice, to say that both counter, gate, and onboard service was atrocious would be a gross understatement. That 40 or so minute flight (in each direction) was sheer hell. I swore them off from that point on and never did set foot on another HP plane.
Speaking of your pilots buddies and HP, it was on an America West plane that I had the scariest ride of my life. It was out of Vegas returning to LAX. It was a 737-300 in the original colors. I learned to not fly out of Vegas on a hot summer afternoon. Just....don't. And I was a seasoned flyer at the time and my butt cheeks were still swallowing those seat cushions long before we even got past Barstow.
That plane on that flight was stuffed to the gills. Full load of passengers. And as I looked out the window, the belly was also loaded with lots and lots and lots of cargo. That plane was heavy. Finally came pushback and the long, long taxi out to the east end of the runways. The plane was trundling down the whole way. It was very hot and very windy that day. The pilot pivoted the plane around into takeoff position and held for a bit. He revved the engines to what seemed like full thrust. They were roaring. But he held the brakes (like they do at SNA) for a bit. Then started the roll. That kind of unnerved me since the runways at LAS are long so as to allow hot/high conditions like this. He finally released the brakes and we just sort of lurched forward. Having flown out of LAS many times (and being one that paid attention to stuff like this), you usually have a pretty good idea about how far down the runway you'll get before you get airborne. Not this time. We just kept going. And kept going. And kept going. We weren't getting airborne. Passed the cargo complex. Passed the Southwest terminal. Still on the ground. Passed the main terminal. Still on the ground. 'Holy yoicks!' I thought to myself. This is a little -300. We should already be at 1500 feet by now. Finally when I knew there wasn't much runway left, we floated off the ground. I still distinctly remember still looking UP at the top of Luxor when we went past it. I mean we were THAT low. And shaking. Just as we started that left bank towards the southwest, we rolled, and dropped. A lot. Bro, it scared the absolute bejesus out of me. I thought we were going down. The pitching and yawing and dropping was intense. And at that low of altitude, if we hit a downdraft, there wasn't enough space between us and the ground to take correcting evasive maneuvers. As the flight went on, we barely gained very much altitude. Of course we did eventually clear the mountains that dot the route. But the shaking and dropping did not abate at all until we were already beginning descent and had cleared the San Bernardino mountains.
^^ Wow. Maybe they had bleed packs on, due to it being a hot day. If not, it doesn't sound like they had much margin for an engine out scenario....
BTW, don't know if this is true or not, but I was once told that after the merger of America West and US scAir (when US still had the black livery), they had to abandon the dark US Air livery due to all the routes they were flying to LAS and PHX. Apparently, the dark exterior color made a real difference in interior temperatures when sitting on the ramp.
I heard that too. But then that begs the question of why Southwest has been going with a dark blue since 2001 given their massive hubs in PHX, LAS, DAL, etc.
Had a high school friend that went down on Critter 592
I worked as a Ramp Rat at Hartsfield-Jackson in 1994 for DAL. Yup, VJ had no tugs to speak of for a while. Those DC-9's threw the thrust reversers on and did the poor-man's pushback. Louder than hell...
Thanks for the history lesson, great pictures and post. I wish that you would have included Braniff airlines operating out of Dallas. I thought it to be one of the better ones. I was lucky to be on flight 502, Honolulu to Dallas the very last flight for this great airline. This was in May of 1982.
Braniff was before my time. Consequently I have no pictures of them. The original Braniff went under even before I took an interest in planes at the tender age of 10. I do remember occasionally seeing the second red/blue/silver/white Braniff that flew from '84-'89 from time to time, but never got any pictures.
Yeah unfortunately Valujet was a lesson in greed and mismanagement gone horribly wrong. And as far as I know, no one was ever really held accountable for that in that they were incarcerated or had to personally shell out millions of dollars. But you are right. 592 wasn't because of wind shear or ATC error. It was murder.
You should have seen the Braniff Stewardesses in their Pucci outfits.
Really, ANY stewardesses from before the mid 70's were enough to quicken your pulse. Recall a buddy plugging his apartment complex not far from Love field as being full of "stews and nurses"...you didn't need to add "hot" back then, it went without saying.
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