747s and VC 10s

Many years ago I flew to Melbourne to do a start up job at a Goodyear plant in Thomastown. I flew from Lax to Honolulu where we refueled in a QANTAS 747 for eight hours. We then flew another eight hours over the Pacific to Fiji where we refueled  a second time. There was three cabins on this particular airplane and in my cabin there was about forty screaming brats being transported to Fiji.  After sixteen hours trapped in that cabin I was about crazy from all of the carrying on. Fortunately the kids got off of the airplane at Fiji and the rest of the trip was a lot quieter. The last eight hour leg was tolerable. 

We finally landed in Sydney and then I transferred to a Trans Australia Airline 727 for the last leg to Melbourne.We arrived on a Sunday so I had a day to kill before jumping in to the job. I watched a cricket match on the telly and never, ever, figured what the purpose of the game was with all of the running back and forth between the two poles driven into the ground.

I wasn't particularly impressed with Australia while I was there. The prevailing attitude there was let the government take care of everything. It was a labor paradise and way too leftist to me. At the Goodyear plant, the workers received a raffle ticket in the morning when they clocked in. The raffle was for a new color TV and you had to be present to win. This was to keep the chaps from wandering off during the workday. Drinking beer with the Aussies however was a lot of fun.

I worked with an Arab engineer who learned to speak English in Australia from a Scotsman.  I had one hell of a time understanding what he was saying most of the time. In Australia some on the equipment was made in the USA and used SAE wrenches and screws. Some equipment was from England and used Whitworth hardware sizes. The rest was from Japan and used metric wrenches and screws. Making an adjustment on a plastic blown film extruder was a barrel of laughs. 

I was there in 1973-74 and Nixon was bombing Cambodia so Americans weren't particularly popular. 

The best part of the trip was the return flight. After the madness on the QANTAS I was ripe for a change. I called BOAC  and asked if they would accept my QANTAS return ticket. They said that they would. 

I flew back on a BOAC VC-10. I have flown all over the world on literally hundreds of airplanes and that flight back from Sydney was far and away the best ever. All four engines are back on the tail and the cabin is quiet. The service was top notch. The food was English which means it was OK and the coffee was British which means it was pretty miserable. Alas the Brits no longer fly the VC-10 for passenger service so we can no longer experience the pleasures of commercial flight but I'll always have Melbourne.

I really don't like to fly anymore. There are no more VC-10s in service and I am no longer married to that cute TWA flight attendant so I no longer fly first class for free. I just have to figure out how to get back to Italy or Germany or the UK without flying.