On Thu, 02 Aug 2007 07:50:14 -0500, Just Plane Noise
wrote:

Dave, you know I agree with you, but I have to quibble about props. My
wife calls any propeller-driven plane a "Buddy Holly plane", and since
we usually travel out of Appleton, we've been on a few. I have to
patiently explain to her that some of the prop-driven craft are
considerably newer and more technologically sophisticated than some of
the hand-me-down jets we've been on. But that leads to a story:

We were scheduled to fly out of Oshkosh on Northwest's feeder, when
(as often happened) Northwest simply cancelled the flight and trucked
us up to Appleton. Our connection to the Pacific Northwest also
changed. Upon boarding the plane, I asked the young, very blond
flight attendant about flight times since we would now be going
through DTW instead of MSP. She found a flight schedule, and I
quickly realized she did not grasp the concept of time zones at all.
Then she pulled back the cockpit curtain (this was obviously pre-9/11)
to talk to the pilot. What do you know? It looked like Buffy's
18-year-old boyfriend Biff would be flying our plane today! I pointed
to them, pointed to the propeller, and said to my wife "we're gonna
die!"

Too funny.

I've flown on many prop aircraft and lots of jets too, having spent 20
years in the Navy. However, I have never crashed in a jet; I've
crashed *twice* in prop aircraft - a C47 at Wright Patterson, and a
C121 in Japan.

My worse flight, however, was from Anchorage, AK to Petropovlosk,
Kamchatka, Russia in a TU-214. The runway at Anchorage is smooth,
until you fly in a TU-214 and you find out it feels like a dirt road
full of pot holes. Funny but the Delta 757 I flew in on wasn't bumpy.

Dave