Plane speaking
Tuesday, 13. May 2008, 15:54:25
Now in Kansas, I went with my mom yesterday to the Airline History Museum at the downtown KCMO airport. It brought back memories for both of us. I come from an airline family; my dad was a 37-year employee of dear old TWA, and my mother was a stewardess for Southern Airways back in the 1950s. They met at an airport Christmas party in Atlanta in 1958. (Back then, you couldn't be married if you were a stewardess, so my mom lost her job and started a family immediately after the wedding.) She used to work on the DC-3s, one of which is currently undergoing an extensive renovation and retrofitting at the museum. The DC-3 was one of those older planes which had its tail touching the ground when parked, so she remembered "climbing the hill" from the back of the plane to the front carrying her trays of coffee tea and cokes! 
The Airline History Museum takes advantage of the donations and the volunteer labor of hundreds of former TWA employees who worked in Kansas City when the airline had its operating headquarters here. It boasts that it is the only museum in the USA dedicated entirely to commerical aviation in the propeller era! The pride and joy of its collection is a magnificent Super Constellation, the pride of the skies in the late 1950s and 1960s before jets rules the skyways. This beautiful "Connie" is the only one of its kind which is still airworthy, and in fact was flown out to California where it appeared in Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes bioptic "The Aviator." Interesting to see the how flying used to be during its Golden Age of comfort and luxury! 
The Airline History Museum takes advantage of the donations and the volunteer labor of hundreds of former TWA employees who worked in Kansas City when the airline had its operating headquarters here. It boasts that it is the only museum in the USA dedicated entirely to commerical aviation in the propeller era! The pride and joy of its collection is a magnificent Super Constellation, the pride of the skies in the late 1950s and 1960s before jets rules the skyways. This beautiful "Connie" is the only one of its kind which is still airworthy, and in fact was flown out to California where it appeared in Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes bioptic "The Aviator." Interesting to see the how flying used to be during its Golden Age of comfort and luxury! 
