During our flight from Honolulu to SFO (and on to Portland) on Tuesday, I had a flashback to the days when smoking was allowed and second-hand smoke was a reality of life while flying anywhere in the world.
The smoking section was often toward the front of the aircraft, usually separated only by a token curtain that did nothing at all to contain the smoke.
I can still feel how upsetting it was to discover that our assigned seats were in the first few rows behind the smoking section. It made flying a miserable experience no matter how good the inflight service might have been.
There were rare occasions where allowing smoking worked in our favor, though. I recall that charter flights from Honolulu to the west coast were offered through the University of Hawaii just before Christmas, and at the end of the semester. These might have been offered through ASUH, as I can’t imagine the university admninistration opening itself up to such liability.
If my memory is correct, we only took one of these charter fights, and it was a doozie! Think a cross between Airplane! and Animal House! The lack of restrictions on smoking meant that the air was full of marijuana smoke through most of the flight, many people were out of their seats and partying the whole way, and mayhem prevailed. It was a 5 or 6 hour raucous celebration! That said, we never did sign up for a repeat, although I don’t recall whether that was the result of a conscious decision or not.
I was hoping to find an advertisement for one of those charter flights somewhere in the archive of Ka Leo o Hawaii, the UH Manoa student newspaper. But the available issues in the online digital archive jump from 1949 to 2002, leaving a 50+ year void covering our graduate student years.
That brings to mind another airline memory worth sharing. During much of the 1980s and 1990s, Meda and I were both doing quite a bit of flying to Washington D.C. and other points, and after the launch of United’s Mileage Plus frequent flyer program, we were racking up the miles. United had by far the most flights and the best schedules between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland, and that’s how we got locked into United world.
We then used the reward miles to upgrade to first class, and during that period those upgrades were much easier to come by. We were fond of the small upstairs cabin in the 747s, accessed by a spiral staircase. First Class was a different world. Table cloths. Silverware (yes, actual silverware). The image that sticks in my mind is a flight attendant rolling a cart down the aisle, stopping to ask whether you wanted prime rib and, if so, whether you preferred rare or well done. Once you made a decision, they would slice the meat, add potatoes, vegetables, and gravy, and pass the plate to you. Later, another cart would roll in with everything needed to make ice cream sundaes on demand, vanilla ice cream with a variety of toppings, whipped cream, nuts, etc.
Today, although we have each racked up more than a million miles, those upgrades are difficult or impossible to get.
We still do more than our share of flying, but it’s just not the same. I wish we had realized that that earlier period was unsustainable. We might have indulged more often at the time!
Ah, such are our mixed memories of flying. I could go on with how different flying was before the security lockdown that now governs airports. And, before that, when Honolulu’s small airport was near the ocean across the runways from the current massive airport at HNL. Passengers and families would freely gather at the gates before passengers were allowed to walk out to the planes and climb stairs up into the aircraft.
I can recall spending hours picking plumeria from the trees in our back yard, and then stringing lei that we would take to the airport and drape on friends or family arriving or departing. I dug up this old photo of my parents and my sister, Bonnie, at the airport sometime in the 1950s. It was a different world.
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Yes, it used to be enjoyable to fly, to greet family at the gate. My flying days are over.
Yes, it was a different world in the air.
The alternative to the leaky screen separating the smokers in the front from the smokees in the back was smokers on the left and non-smokers on the right. I recall that from some of my $25 “stand-by” tickets from college in DC to home in Cleveland in the late 1960s; struck me as nonsensical at the time; everyone sits across from the people poisoning them. But saved the cost of the room divider.
Airport security? When the Kona airport was fresh in the early 70’s (and all the koa wood paneling was still bright and shiny) I got off the plane with my backpack and walked the runway north to its end and then tuned makai to start a three-day hike up the coast, exiting at Waikaloa (no buildings yet) and hitching a ride on a dump to the old highway. I suspect if I tried that now I would be detained by airport security or a chain link fence, which ever came first.
I experimented by processing the old blurry airport photo with Topaz Lab’s Gigapixel for iPad. There are a few glitches, but overall the photo is now far crisper and detailed. Don’t look too closely, though. You’ll find some imperfections that remain or were made worse.
Not about flying, but about how being at the airport has changed. I worked in the newsroom at KHVH Channel 4 (now KITV) in the 1960s – before satellites, so we had to rely on videotapes of national newscasts flown in from Los Angeles each night. If the flight with our tape was on time (scheduled to arrive at 9:40 pm), we could cue up news reports and use them on our ten o`clock newscast.
The choreography: A courier from KABC in LA would take the news tape to PanAm at LAX. it was placed under the passenger seat immediately adjacent to the cockpit door toward the rear of the plane. (No jetways then; passengers entered and exited the aircraft using moveable stair devices – the kind you see Trump going up and down into Air Force 1.)
When the plane arrived in Honolulu, our courier was allowed to head up the stairway and grab the tape from under the seat and head for his delivery van. Channel 4 was on Ala Moana at the time, and if traffic was good, the tape would arrive at the station about 9:55 pm – in time to cue up the appropriate news clips (we had someone in LA give us a rundown of times in advance).
We had good luck with this most nights. If the flight was delayed or traffic from HNL was not good, we had a second script we had prepared to cover the “no tape” scenario.
It is truly unimaginable to think that something like this would play out at any airport on the globe these days.
The 1st class upper deck of the 747 was truly a world apart. My one experience was circa 1980 on PanAm. We were given menus with multiple gourmet choices and courses to order from. There was a rolling caviar and smoked fish cart stocked with champagne and iced vodkas. I was a fledgling fine dining manager at the time and the GM at the hotel in Wailea where I worked sent me and our chef to Hong Kong to observe how it was done there. Very memorable experience!
Yeah the early days of the Mileage Plus program were great for upgrades. You had to (1) know you could upgrade, which many folks did not; and (2) request the upgrade as soon as your status allowed, which was either 24, 72 or 100 hours in advance IIRC. And the upgrade process was largely manual, so if your cousin or your aunty or your neighbor was the gate agent, they could somehow move you up to the top of the list. And the service up there was great as Ian says. I learned how to drink cognac on those flights.