Real life Retro flight

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Wayne Pierce
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Real life Retro flight

Post by Wayne Pierce »

An old guy retro airplane story.
I was, with the family, and young at the time living in Rome Italy. We left in January 1959 and came back to the USA via the TWA Constellation, the Jetstream Ambassador. It so happened there was an Atlantic storm we flew through and I got very airsick, it was also night the entire time. It was my mother and brother whom I was traveling with at the time. When we arrived in New York we were to take the train to Springfield MA to stay with my aunt.

It was also Winter time with snow and ice condition in the Northeast. When the aircraft landed, the cargo hatches were frozen shut and could not be opened up within the short amount of time we had to spend at the airport. So wearing my clothes I was sick on we left.

The airport fellow who helped us get a cab told my Mother not to tell him where we were going until we were all in the cab. We needed to go to the train station and that meant either a short ride and not much money for him or a long one with the snow and ice on the highways. I don't know.

We lived in Italy for some time and by their rules we had to learn Italian in school. And as we were from the New England area, on the train we got to talking to the conductor who spoke Italian. My mother always told us we were conversing with him in Italian with a New England accent. Okey Dokey.

Now back to our luggage. The airline contacted us later and said we would receive it later, two weeks later. So new clothes had to be bought for us. It was really a good winter in Upton, MA that year.

The following schedules are from an vintage airline timetable web site. I get quite a few of timetable from them. It so happens this is the schedule from our flight.
schedule2.jpg
schedule2.jpg (249.85 KiB) Viewed 986 times
schedule1.jpg
schedule1.jpg (242.96 KiB) Viewed 986 times
schedule3.jpg
schedule3.jpg (176.75 KiB) Viewed 986 times
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Re: Real life Retro flight

Post by Norberto Rivera »

I thought you were about to graduate college in 1959 Wayne. I must be confusing you with Harold. :twisted: Thanks for sharing! I just wonder what they did with the luggage of people who were boarding the plane.
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Wayne Pierce
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Re: Real life Retro flight

Post by Wayne Pierce »

I can only assume that this was the terminus for this flight, so baggage loading was not an issue. Here is a newspaper clipping for the airline and airplane.
twa ad.jpg
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Another couple of retro items for me. Also when I was much younger we went to Hawaii via a WW2 troop transport.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gener ... e_(AP-176) That was fun. And yes I got seasick. I am not good for motion things.

We then flew to Guam via a Pan Am B-707 from Travis AFB and a year later came back the same way.

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