VintageAirTravel.com

It was the summer of 1989. I was due to turn 11 in August of the year.

The Cosby Show (NBC) was the most popular TV series, but I was not watching it as much.
I was into this cool show called 227, that was my jam! Also, the Discovery channel was one of my favorite channels to watch.
Batman was cool with Keyton, and Crocodile Dundee II had been out but I was watching it by summer of 89.
I could go on and on about the movies of the day.

Music that was hitting my ears included Soul II Soul – “Keep on Movin”, Milli Vanilli – Girl You Know It’s True, Something in the Way (You Make Me Feel) by Stephanie Mills, and This Time I Know It’s for Real by Donna Summer.

That was what I received regarding popular culture at the time and it helps me capture the moments in my mind here on this page.

Some time before the trip, parents had purchased our airline tickets for a round trip from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. What I found out at the time was that we would be riding with Midway Airlines on an McDonnel Douglas MD-80 connecting through Chicago’s Midway Airport via a DC-9 to Philadelphia. Until that point, I had never heard of Midway Airlines and the MD-80 was new to me as well. Granted by then I was aware of the MD80 aircraft from the books I read, but they did not seem as prevalent in fleets until some years later.

Fast forward to the day of the trip and we were riding to the airport from Torrance, CA and on the radio plays “Something in the Way (You Make Me Feel)” by Stephanie Mills. My uncle gave us a ride to the airport and the significance of this track is that it set a vibe of excitement and anticipation for this trip. It was the first time I have heard the song and or became aware of Stephanie Mills. The song will always take me to that moment in time.

We arrive at terminal 3 at Los Angeles International Airport LAX, and my parents run into some sort of issue with the airline involving a discrepancy regarding the trip date. I am a bit confused about the whole situation as I don’t know all the details. However, the discussion with the agent was heated, but Midway Airlines worked it out.

We get past the initial check in and we are headed up to the terminal. For the first leg of this trip, we would be flying standby. There was 4 of us in our party making this trip which included me, mom, dad, little sister. It was relatively late at night, and there was a chance that we would not be able to make the flight. Where was the MD-80 aircraft as indicated on the ticket? We were to take this McDonnel Douglas DC-9-31 instead. It was all interesting to me because I only remember riding the Lockheed L-1011 with Trans World Airlines in 1985 and have not flown since.

I learned what flying standby was all about that night, and I was not really that thrilled by the concept because I like to have reservations and seats confirmed. We proceeded to the boarding area near our gate to wait to board. It appears that the DC-9 was parked at the same gate as my L-1011 flight years ago. I could not see too much of the plane other than the side of it and the large Midway titles and stripes.

The boarding process began, I remember anxiously waiting not knowing if there was enough room on the flight for us all. They called us up last, stamped the tickets and boarded us. It was nice walk down the jet bridge to the DC-9. The flight was packed and we all sat separately. I sat towards the front area with strangers. From that point in the aircraft, I recall it being somewhat quiet during the cruise portion of the flight.

It was late, and we made our way to the 24L for departure. The flight attendants gave their safety briefing demo. The engines were brought up to take of power, and off we went over the ocean, and we made a turn towards the east for Chicago Midway. It was a fun flight in a smaller aircraft than what I was used to.

At one point they passed out pneumatic headphones but they were charging a dollar or two for them. The flight attendant looked at me with the last set in his hand and handed it to me for free. I got lucky.

With the headset, I flipped through the various channels and at one point I hit some channel and I discovered “This Time I Know It’s for Real” by Donna Summer. I listened to that and flipped some more channels. They did not have a big screen for the movies or any screen for that matter.

If they did serve anything on this segment, I don’t quite remember much but I may have had a soda. The flight crew were awesome for all legs of this journey.

In those times I would entertain the thought of going up and seeing the flight deck, but I was too shy for that.

The time had passed and sunlight was beginning to break as we made a turn for final approach. I remember the landing as in the thump of the wheels hitting the runway was not as evident as in other past flights. It was a greaser of a landing, such that I was not sure if we were on the ground.

On the roll out and taxi to the gate, I noticed all these Midway aircraft and I came up with a term “The Fleet Effect”. This is when you get to an airport see a significant amount of aircraft for a single airline fleet. This was their hub. And keep in mind, that for a kid this was all new to me, and I was still trying to figure out how all of this works.

So this was my first time that I had been to Chicago. We deplaned and made our way for the connecting flight to Philadelphia. The layout at this airport was strange and new to me. It was the fact that the waiting area was at the ground level and the jet bridge was on the 2nd floor level with a ramp up to it. I was looking at our next aircraft at the gate, another DC-9-30 from the ground up.

I thought to keep some sort of log of the tail numbers, but I was too young to keep anything. On the flight for which we arrived, as kids me my sister received the plastic wings they had at the time.

It came time for boarding our flight to Philadelphia. The sun was well up, and we had not been too long on the layover. This time I sat near the back of the plane and it was a noisey experience because the Pratt & Whitney JT8Ds were loud and sounded like large vacuum cleaner.

So after the boarding process and pushback, we were on our way. As we taxied the safety brief was done and after the brief taxi, the engines were set to take-off and off we went.

Even thought it was another DC-9-30 series aircraft, I noticed slight differences from the other aircraft that we were aboard for the flight into Chicago. It would be little things like slight difference in cabin layout or cabin upholstery.

We were in the air and meal service was started. They served me a poppy seed bagel, juice and maybe a piece of fruit. With the bagel, Philadelphia Cream Cheese was served and I put it on my bagel. It was really good and I never had the cream cheese before.

Before long, the short flight from Chicago Midway, to Philadelphia would be concluded. We were vectored for what I believe to be a 27L approach. We were on the ground doing the roll out and I notice that this is USAir territory.

At the time USAir had recently acquired Piedmont Airlines and they had such a mix bag of a fleet. I also saw Braniff #2 with their 727 parked at some gate. USAir was really interesting as I saw their Fokker F-28 Fellowship 4000s, Boeing 737-200s, Boeing 727s, DC-9s, and various commuter types.