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Jim Daigneau wrote:

One more thing for this thread: I have been working with Andrew Vane to add historic NWA flights to the schedule. I am currently working from Andrew's 2001 NWA timetable to round out the jet routes. After this is complete, I will go back to find some more historic prop-liner schedules for the DC-6/7, Connies and the Super Strat. The prop-liners offer a different and challenging DVA piloting experience.
Of course, let's not forget that Pan Am is also part of the Delta heritage. With management's concurrence, I will look to add some PAA flights to the historic data base as well adding to the fleet knowledge base.

Jim Daigneau wrote:

I have visited the classic era airport issue a couple of times and found a few things to remember: MOST of the airports in the DVA system are still there, albeit much larger than they were in the 40s and 50s, Altanta being a great example. There are certainly many more. The notable exceptions are KGSW (Ft Worth, Carter Field), which was replaced by KDFW. In your logbook or Delta 1950s timetables, you may see ACF as the Ft Worth airport. "Amon Carter Field" became "Greater Southwest International" in the early 60s as Ft Worth thought the name change might help the anemic traffic: it didn't. DFW was built literally a couple of miles up the road, and Carter Field got buldozed to eventually become the home office campus for American Airlines. Some of the smaller cities had to build bigger airports to handle jets. Jackson, MS and Jacksonville, FL are examples. In Jackson, Hawkins was the original Delta airport and still exists as a GA field. In the KJAX case, Imeson Field is now an industrial park. Also, Delta used Cinncinati Lunken during WW2 after the company was awarded AM54 in 1941. They then moved to KCVG when it started commercial ops in 1947, Lunken remains a GA field.
Some cities had airports a little too small for jets and SHOULD have turned them into condos but didn't--LGA or MDW anyone?
Any members who have spent any time looking through Tom Gibson's website know that there are gigabytes of scenery addons that cover the classic era the world over. If you are dedicated to flying the classics like me, putting up with a few modified aerodrome locations is not a huge deal. The bigger challenge is finding VOR and NDB approaches as ILSs and RNAV approaches are starting to fill databases.
As Captain Vane noted on the home screen, we are working on getting the NWA jet era flights into the schedule. There are more to come. For the prop era long range flights, you can consider L1049, DC-7C and B377 flights interchangable. In fact, NWA operated all three types at various times on the Pacific routes, as did Pan Am on both Pacific and Atlantic routes. Even the 1960 Pan Am schedule still shows DC-7Cs and Strats working the South Pacific between Honolulu and New Zealand/Australia. Fun stuff!

Jim Daigneau wrote:

Norm--that logbook is an amazing find. I think CHI was/is the identifier for all Chicago airports. According to the 54 timetable, Midway was the airport. The 1958 timtable shows service to O'Hare. BTW, what's the pilot's name? I'll bet our archivist at the DFM would be interested.

Pan Am and United were the biggest domestic operators of the SP. See this cool website: http://www.747sp.com/operators/
Delta operated Pan Am's A310s for a few years after the merger, but they were sold/ returned to the lessor around 1994. Not to cast stones at the Blue Ballers, but the airplanes were not in very good shape when Delta to over the leases.
IMHO, the 747 was not a very good fit for Delta at the time. This is a concurring opinion from a website: Delta operated a fleet of five 372 seat Boeing 747s (fleet numbers 101-105) in service from 1970 to 1977. Configured with 58 First class seats and 304 Tourist seats, N9896 inaugurated 747 service on October 25, 1970 on the Atlanta-Dallas (Love Field)-Los Angeles route. Other routes included Chicago-Miami, Chicago-Atlanta, Los Angeles-Atlanta, Detroit-Atlanta, Jacksonville-Atlanta and Detroit-Miami. Delta also operated an interchange with Pan Am using Delta's 747's on Atlanta-London Heathrow and Atlanta-Frankfurt. Can you believe Delta flew to London Heathrow and with 747's! It's true as shown in some of the pictures below. Here's the link: http://l1011.homestead.com/747.html
When I was an engineer on the L-1011, I flew with a captain who, as a 747 copilot, had landed on the short crosswind runway at DAL. Just silly.

Darren Tung wrote:

Okay, there were a couple of aircraft that I forgot, like the 747SP, and the early DC-8s, as well as the 727-100.

Andrew Vane wrote:

Chris,

The B377 is now part of the fleet! There are also 4 historical flights I've added under NWA (MDW-MSP and MSP-JFK).

enjoy!

Andrew Vane wrote:

Those should be in there Norm. Look in the DVH schedule database. They were multi-leg flights. Enjoy!

Jim Daigneau wrote:

Norm-- I ran your logbook find by our archivist. She was pretty much not interested. I thought it was a little odd, because she looked a tad frazzled. Then I found out the rest of the story. While the Delta Flight Museum display area is in full operation mode, the archive room is still a semi-desaster area. Everything is covered with plastic. Piping, insulation and HVAC are still being worked on, and I think they are trying to figure out how they are going to get one of the 747s placed in the outside display area. She said they have lots of logbooks and other stuff yet to be catalogged. So i read that as they don't have a good handle on what they have or don't have yet. It's been complicated by the fact that donations have increased alot since the museum went public last year. I have nothing to report, yet anyway.
Although, on a brighter note, I was volunteering as a docent and had the opportunity to meet Delta pilot number 176--Mr Charlie Scroggs (I think) got hired in 1946 after flying transports during the war, and retired in 1981. He showed me his last issued pilot cert that contained type ratings for DC-3, DC-4, DC-6, DC-7, DC-8, CV-240, CV-340, CV-440, CV-880, CV-990, L-1011. I think I got them all. I didn't talk to him near as long as I was hoping to--I was going to ask how he missed the L-049/749 and B747. Dang.
Peter--great site. Thanks for the link!