A little rant….

Richman said:
When I first had my ass kicked off planet, Mesaba had Metros and Fokker F-27s (the whistle pig) and Express 1 was running Jetstreams. Mesaba was down at gate 1, while Express was down with the rest of the scooter trash at gate 89. Mesaba went through some Dash-8s change of clothes before they got to the Saabs, and I think Express went Saab as well.

You can still watch Bemidji launch all the Queenairs left in the world at 0700 every morning, though, same as it was 30 years ago.
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My captain the other day had flown at Express 1 back when they were Express 1
 
Richman said:
The G concourse (wasn't called that then, just had numbers) in MSP is functionally the same in 2024, except they removed all the cool airplanes from the ceiling and stored them away in Southernville.
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Gates just had numbers, but Concourse G was called the Gold Concourse. F was the Red Concourse, E was the Blue Concourse and C & D made up the Green Concourse. I thought they should have used gold, red, blue and green carpeting in each concourse to correspond with its name.
 
Hiboglossi said:
Gates just had numbers, but Concourse G was called the Gold Concourse. F was the Red Concourse, E was the Blue Concourse and C & D made up the Green Concourse. I thought they should have used gold, red, blue and green carpeting in each concourse to correspond with its name.
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There is apparently a whole genre of people who are fans of the geometric but weirdly bland style of hotel carpet.

www.telegraph.co.uk

The surprisingly beautiful world of hotel carpets

For those who consider the humble carpet to be little more than building insulation, I would suggest reading up on Portland Airport's (now lost) underfoot tapestry.
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
 
Roger Roger said:
After Airnet hosted the NIFA nerdcon in 2007 I wanted nothing more than to be a starchecker and fly the mighty Learjet. I passed my interview and sim check the next year and was placed in the pool. The Learjet ride to and from the interview only solidified what I wanted. Well, you know better than most what happened next.

I did get to play freight dawg quite a bit up here in AK, occasionally even in the Chieftain (still the most fun airplane I’ve flown). I did eventually get the LR-JET SIC type in the pocket rocket 31, and got a whopping 2.7 SIC checkout in the 35 when the previous gig had the brilliant idea of using it as a backup airplane. But the vast majority of my jet time is in the much more docile and civilized (read:boring) 45. Funny how things go I guess.
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Airnet was a great place to start out and I appreciate it more and more as I have moved along in my career. It gave me the building blocks for every next step up the ladder and a bunch of lifelong friends. Last month I flew a three day with another old Starchecker and while we overlapped a few months we didn't know each other there. Still had a blast reminiscing about old times and the characters we flew with.

I'd love to see some SNAP influencer try to made a video with Fred when he lights up a cig and barks gear up at the same time.
 
Roger Roger said:
After Airnet hosted the NIFA nerdcon in 2007 I wanted nothing more than to be a starchecker and fly the mighty Learjet. I passed my interview and sim check the next year and was placed in the pool. The Learjet ride to and from the interview only solidified what I wanted. Well, you know better than most what happened next.

I did get to play freight dawg quite a bit up here in AK, occasionally even in the Chieftain (still the most fun airplane I’ve flown). I did eventually get the LR-JET SIC type in the pocket rocket 31, and got a whopping 2.7 SIC checkout in the 35 when the previous gig had the brilliant idea of using it as a backup airplane. But the vast majority of my jet time is in the much more docile and civilized (read:boring) 45. Funny how things go I guess.
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Yup my Airnet story was similar, when CW came to a riddle job fair. I was working on my PPL and they were the only place that would talk to me and even took my resume! He remembered me each year when I went and they hired me sub 1200 hours with the dream that I could be a Lear captain one day. Less than 2 years later I was. I'll never diminish how extremely lucky I was. Yea it all came tumbling down and in retrospect it probably was an incredibly unlucky time comparatively to be coming up but i wouldn't trade my time as a starchecker for anything.
 
mikecweb said:
…but i wouldn't trade my time as a starchecker for anything.
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Same. I wouldn’t have been one without you and others here.

The experience served me well as a military pilot and as an airline pilot. And, the guy who interviewed me at my airline was an ex-starchecker… man, that was the easiest interview I’ve had. We BSed about Airnet for an hour and I was outta there.
 
///AMG said:
Yep, my brother-in-law’s little sister used to do this every time she traveled anywhere. But then she moved from PDX to Stockholm so she doesn’t anymore….it’s a fairly weird interest I’d say
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My uncle lives in PDX and does that every time he travels somewhere as well.
 
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