I finally saw the show. It's good entertainment, and for me a bit of nostalgia; and I agree with someone who said the music was a bit too loud. It was the appropriate music for the period, but a little loud during the dialogues.
Certainly the show is meant to be entertainment with a dash of reality. Flight Attendants marching through the terminal in formation was never reality.
We stayed in First Class hotels, not Luxury hotels as the show depicted. In London we stayed at a hotel not far from Picadilly Circus, and I believe we completely filled the hotel with our contract. We had a lot of crews laying over at London every day.
It was good to see the Pan Am Building with the name intact. The circular Pan Am terminal was impressive during the 60's but was quickly out dated.
I remember the day that Delta took over the Pan Am North Atlantic Routes (I went to Delta with those routes) I went to my Queens commuter apartment one night and the next morning when I came back to the airport the Pan Am signs at the terminal were covered up with big DELTA signs. A very sad moment for Pan Am because it was close to the last gasp of breath for Pan Am.
Pan Am did a lot of humanitarian work for the government, and some of it was gratis volunteer work. In 1985, Mexico City had an 8.1 magnitude earthquake, and I was one of the pilots who volunteered to fly there to deliver supplies without pay. Pan Am furnished the aircraft free.
For years we flew GI's out of Vietnam for R&R to Hong Kong, Bangkok and Sydney under a government contract.
Sending airplanes to pick up the Bay of Pigs prisoners was just one of those missions, but in that case Pan Am was probably paid by the U.S. government.
The scene where the Captain was going to leave the flight attendant behind in Cuba would not have happened. The Purser would have made sure all the flight attendants were on board, and if one was missing would have informed the Captain and the Operations Manager.
The Captain would have made damn sure he had all of his crew on board. There is no way he would have left one of his crew behind.
She was probably still inside the building fighting to get the last couple of people out. She would not have been having a "meeting" with someone. The show did not make it clear what she was doing, and that was unfortunate.
During the 60's there was probably no Pan Am Captain younger than 40. Many of them were much older and a few had been on the
Flying Boats In my opinion, a Charlton Heston, or Sullenberger type would have made more sense. But then again it wouldn't have fit the storyline.
Also, because the Purser position had a higher pay, many of the Pursers were also older, with more seniority to hold that position. They cast this crew as all the same age.
This is trivia, but up until later in the 60's and 70's when bell bottom trousers, long hair and long sideburns came into vogue, the pilots sideburns could not protrude below a line drawn back from the eye. This Captains sideburns are too low for 1963 and his hair is touching the collar which was also not allowed.
So far they've only displayed the glamorous side of the job, with the requisite sex thrown in for interest. They haven't shown the flight attendant in the most important role, which is safety, and how quickly the glamorous hat can be removed and replaced by the no-nonsense take charge and protect their passengers, hat.
When pilots started to lengthen the sideburns like the rest of society, the Check Captains would get on them. They would ask you to stick your finger in your ear and if the sideburns touch the top of the finger they were too long
One of our professional engineers was nicknamed Dirty Dan. He was a really great guy who would say whatever was on his mind at any time, to anyone.
On a flight one day a Check Pilot was on board and at one point during the flight he told Dan to stick his finger in his ear.
Dan told the Check Pilot to
"stick your finger in your #ss"
. True story.
No further attempt was made to have Dan stick his finger in his ear.
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