[BITList] From another List......

[John FELTHAM]

The days of the Comet & VC10

Those were the good ole days. Pilots back then were men that didn't
want to be women or girlymen. 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 jet Captain was as good as being the King in a Mel Brooks
movie. All the Stewardesses (aka.Flight Attendants/WAAF AQM's) 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 ****pit door. They would blush and
say thank you when told that they looked good, instead of filing a
sexual harrassment claim. Junior WAAF AQM's shared a room and talked
about men.... with no thoughts of substitution.

Passengers wore nice clothes and were polite, they could speak AND
understand English. They didn't speak gibberish or listen to loud
gangsta rap on their IPods. They bathed 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
mongolhordes asking for a "mu-fuggin" seatbelt extension or a Scotch
and grapefruit juice ****tail 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 De Havilland
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 AQM's chests. Airplanes and women had eye pleasing symetrical
curves, not a bunch of ugly vortex generators, ventral fins, winglets,
flow diverters, tatoos, rings in their nose, tongues and eyebrows.

Airlines were run by men like Freddy Laker who had built their
companies virtually from scratch, knew many 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.

With apologies to the original Boeing 707 & civvy airline link.