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.
