Northwest Orient Airlines August 1, 1963

This timetable is back when Northwest was Northwest Orient and flew across the Pacific to Asia and Hawaii. This is one packed 20 page timetable.

As you see by the cover, they were announcing the Boeing Intercontinental 707-320B was joining their fleet. Page two also lists their other aircraft including Boeing 720B fan jets, Douglas DC8's, DC7's, DC6B's and Electra prop jets.

Due to the distance to Asia, all flights went via Anchorage and flights originated in Seattle, Chicago, and New Yorks Idlewild airport (now JFK).

The inside front cover has some great double page graphics of their new 707 and information about the aircraft.

While this was the era of 'railroad' style schedules, Northwest also had some quick reference domestic schedules in the front for popular cities pairs listing flight info, aircraft type, and the type of onboard service.

Some sample fares are New York-Seattle oneway in First class $186.90 or $1401.00 in 2012 dollars. Night coach between Chicago-Milwaukee $8.85 oneway or $66.00 in 2012 dollars.
Wanted to go from New York to Manila roundtrip in coach $1120.00 or are you ready....that's $8396.00 in 2012 dollars.

Overall a nice timetable for the era.

Eastern Airlines December 3, 1974

Eastern operated between 1926 and 1991 and as the name says, flew mostly in the eastern part of the USA and caribbean. It did fly to a few west coast cities and would grow domesticly and into Latin America in years to come.

This timetable has a pink, purple, and blue outer color style naming various cities it flew to. This timetable must have been a local Los Angeles cover as the back gave a list of ticket offices in the greater L.A. area.

The timetable listed which flights were 'Whisperliner' flights operated by L1011 widebody jets, and even had a separate schedule towards the back with just whiperliner flights.

Also included towards the front was the famous Eastern Air-Shuttle service showing their hourly flight times between Boston-New York/LaGuardia and Washington/National-New York/LaGuardia. Also shown was shuttle fares of $28.00 oneway Boston-NY and $30.00 oneway Washington-NY. That would be in 2012 dollars (rounded) $130 and $140.

There is even an ad and membership form to join Eastern's Ionosphere private club. They listed lounges at Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, Newark, New York (JFK and LaGuardia), San Juan, and Washington/National. Annual membership cost was $25.00 or a life time membership for $200.00. Or in 2012 dollars $116 and $931.

Frontier Airlines February 23, 1975

This is the first Frontier Airlines formed in June 1950 from a merger of Arizona Airways, Challenger Airliines and Monarch Airlines. Frontier's last published timetable was dated September 3, 1986. It never went into effect because the airline halted operations and filed bankruptcy the week before.

Frontier flew to many large and small (really small) cities from the west coast to the midwest.

People Express bought Frontier in October 1985 and ran it as a separate division unil August 1986 when Frontier ceased operations.

The front of this 31 page timeable had very colorful art work with a Las Vegas theme. The inside cover had a double page vacatioin destination ad for Phoenix and Las Vegas.

The back cover showed a typical midwest looking flight attendant with a country style apron serving a meal tray. Frontier was using a motto of  'First class legroom at coach prices'. They had single class service with more leg room and served first class meals on jet service. It also says on most lunch and dinner flights meals feature a complimentary personal size bottle of imported Mateus wine with each meal.
The timetable does not have a route map or must info for passengers. It did show symbols showing which flights had a meal service or snack service, and which flights had a Happy Hour two for one cocktails. It did point out that some flights were operated by indepentent contractors airlines and by
RW-Hughes Air West.

They didn't even say what the flight numbers in bold type meant.

National Airlines June 13, 1978

This is the old National Airlines and not the 'new' National Airlines that started years after the old one was taken over by PanAm.

The original National operated from 1934 to 1980 when it was purchase by PanAm.

This timetable included National international service to London-Heathrow, Paris-Orly, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt. National flew DC-10's on these routes from Miami and also had nonstop service between Tampa-Amsterdam which continued on to Frankfurt and a New Orleans-Amsterdam-Frankfurt route. MIA-LHR operated daily, but the other routes were operated on various days.

While National timetables were in alphbetical order by city, the timetables of this era also included what was called railroad schedules as shown in the fourth photo. There charts showed flights top to bottom as they operated by flight number so you go see the arrival/departure times of all the cities a flight number operated.

National was a well liked airline and people were sad to see it disappear and become part of PanAm.

Hughes Airwest April 24, 1977

The 'Top Banana in the West' was their slogan and bright yellow airplanes is what they flew.

Hughes Airwest as in Howard Hughes, purchased Airwest in 1970 which was a mix of other airlines going back to 1941. The airline was mostly flying in the western part of the USA with service into Canada and Mexico. The airline was sold to Republic Airlines in 1980. Republic was also an airline made up of other airlines and was itself purchased by Northwest in 1986, which is not owned by Delta.

TWA-Trans World Airlines October 27, 1974

This is a 47 page timetable from when TWA was offering round the world service. TWA was purchased by American Airlines in 2001 prior to 9/11.

TWA would later give up it's Asia service which included Guam, Okinawa, Taipei, Bangkok and Hong Kong. They would continue to operate to Bombay even while I was working for them.

The timetable shows which flights were operated by 747's and L1011's and includes fares in all their markets. One way New York - Los Angeles was USD243.00 (USD1131.00 in todays dollars) in First Class and New York - London was USD578.00 (USD2689.00 in todays dollars) oneway in First Class.

TWA also had cargo only aircraft across the Atlantic, Pacific, and within the USA.

This was an era when widebody aircraft, mainly the L10's were flying to such cities as Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Kansas City. Today you are lucky to see mainline jets in cities that used to have widebody aircraft.

American Airlines August 1, 1975

This is a 59 page American Airlines timetable which has a route map as you open the timetable.

There were an internationl carrier then was flights to Mexico City, Acapulco, Bermuda and eight Caribbean cities.

I liked AA timetables of the era as they showed what aircraft was used on each flight. This timetable shows they flew 727, 707, DC10, and 747 aircraft.

The 747's were used between JFK and LAX/SFO/SJU. DC10's were used to bigger cities including Buffalo, New York.

This was also a time with the major airlines had cargo only jets with AA using 747's and 707's. This timetable also showed their freight schedule. Most freighter service was to New York/JFK/EWR, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, San Juan, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Swift Aire December 1, 1976

Swift Aire was a California airline flying up and down the coast mainly between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The timetable is dated December 1, 1976 through January 31, 1977 so was mainly for the winter holiday season. Swift Aire started 1969, and  continued service until 1981, when it merged with Golden Gate Airlines.

This is another simple folded timetable and didn't list cities in alphabetical order. Swift Aire flew prop aircraft and was based in San Luis Obispo, California.

The timetable is interesting as it doesn't show schedules or fares between San Francisco, San Jose or Sacramento to Los Angeles. If you check the schedules the flights do go to Los Angeles but don't show it.

The timetable listed fares with a oneway fare of USD15.50 (today that would be USD62.49) between San Francisco and San Jose and USD37.50 (today that would be USD151.18) between the state capital in Sacramento to either Bakersfield or Santa Maria.

Midway Airlines February 1, 1981

This was a simple Midway timetable when they flew from a Chicago/Midway base to Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cleveland, New York/La Guardia and Washington/National.

Midway flew between 1976 and 1991 and for this timetable flew 83 passenger DC9 aircraft.

Blue and Orange were their colors as shown by the timetable. The timetable is a simple folded timetable with a route map and shows blue and orange flights info. Blue was low economy fares and orange lower super economy fares.

If you noticed the timetable was not listed in alphabetical order. They must have layed out the timetable to fit using the least number of pages to keep it a simple folded design.

Braniff June 1, 1980

This was actually Braniff International, but they did go by different names over the years. The first Braniff operated from 1930 until May 12, 1982. Braniff in a much smaller form would come back and try and reinvent itself....twice!

Used to love seeing Braniff and all their different colored airplanes. Their timetables were always a different color also. As you can see this one was orange with yellow and white.

When you open the timeable you see their route map showing their domestic service and another showing their flights to Asia, Europe, and South America. While Braniff was known for its Latin America serive, they tried to grow to fast and branched out over the Pacific and Europe.

Asia was serviced via Los Angeles to Seoul, Hong Kong, and Guam. Honolulu was served via Dallas.
They used Boston and Dallas as their gateways to London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, and Paris.

This is an 83 page timetable which also showed service to non-Braniff international cities you could connect to.

Braniff used bold type to show which flights were operated by 747's which included all Asia, Europe, Hawaii service and select deep South America flights.

Aloha Airlines May 1, 1977

As you can see this is Aloha timetable #124. Not sure why they numbered their timetables besides having an effective date.

Aloha flew between July 26, 1946, and ceased on March 31, 2008. Sad to see an old airline shut down.

This is a small one fold timetable with fares and a route map on the back and their flight schedules on the inside.

Looks like their most expensive fare as USD38.00 (USD144.00 today) between Hilo and Lihue. If you were a youth group of five or more under 20 and accompanied by at least one adult paying an adult fare, each youth could pay USD8.55 (USD32.00 today) between Molokai and Maui. The biggest route in Hawaii and Honolulu and Maui (OGG) and cost USD23.00 (USD87.00 today). While the timetable was effective May 1, the fares were effective January 1977.

That's at least five months keeping the same fares, now a days airlines change fares every five minutes.

I'd flown Aloha a few time within Hawaii. It was one vacation with a friend flying into Honolulu and connecting on Aloha to Kona. After a few days we flew Aloha from Kona via HNL to Lihue and then Aloha to Honolulu to fly home.

TranStar September 15, 1986

TranStar was started by  Marion Lamar Muse as Muse Air. Mister Muse was President of Southwest and started his own airline after stepping down from Southwest.

TranStar flew from California to Florida along the southern part of the USA via Houston/Hobby it's main city. They also used New Orleans as their main stop between Texas and Florida. They flew DC9's and MD80 type aircraft.

The airline would later be purchased and merged into Southwest Airlines.

This timetable included fares which used to be standard in timetables before airlines decided they needed to have about twenty fares in each market.

TranStar also had a membership club in Houston called The Empyrean Club. Kind of unusal for a small airline to have a private club, but they did.

They must have also been connected in Disney World as one page of this timetable was wishing the park a Happy 15th Birthday.

Back in 1986 I interviewed with TranStar at the Los Angeles Intl Airport (Terminal 1). At the time the airline had 15 flights out of Los Angeles. I didn't get the job, but if I had I wonder if I would still be working there after Southwest purchased TranStar.

Aero California Novenber 17, 1995

Aero California was a Mexican airline that is no longer around. They flew DC9's mostly within Mexico, but had a daily Tucson-hermosillo flight and a daily flights from Los Angeles to six cities in Mexico.

I was living in Los Angeles at the time and it was kind of funny to see tiny Aero California DC9's at the Bradley International terminal among all those giant 747's.

This timetable did not include a route map, which has always amazed me when airlines didn't show one in their timetables. Guess they wanted you to look at the entire timetable to see where they flew.