01-09-2010
03:08 AM
4 Loves
Your "ten minute turns" sound an awful lot like the "turns" of the original Southwest Airways in the 1950s when they were flying DC3 planes.
The old DC3s from WWII had a door that swung open to the side and then someone had to push a short stairway up to the plane to board the passengers (and let them off). Someone in Southwest Airways decided that this took too long so they designed a new door that layed down and had a stair built into it with a handrail that popped up. This speeded up the process. My Dad (who used to fly for the old Southwest) used to complain that when they showed a DC3 in a WWII movie they usually showed one with the fold down door that wasn't developed until after WWII.
The old Southwest changed it's name to Pacific (no relationship to PSA - Pacific Southwest Airlines either). Then Pacific merged with Northwest (not the Northwest that Delta just bought - that was called Northwest Orient at that point) and Bonanza to form AirWest which was bought by Howard Hughes and became Hughes Airwest which was bought by Republic which was bought by Northwest (yes, now the Northwest that was just bought by Delta).
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