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No More Flying With Reindeer: Alaska Airlines Set to Retire Its Boeing 737 Combi
Alaska Airlines is retiring its last four combi planes, special Boeing 737-400s designed to carry cargo in the middle of the plane and 72 passengers in the rear, company vice president Marilyn Romano told The Associated Press ahead of this week’s unveiling of the first of three new cargo planes for the state. (www.seattletimes.com) Plus d'info...
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Fist 737 were combis with skis on nose wheels to land in the Arctic gravel runways...
Will they still serve reindeer sausage for breakfast? Standard fare for the early morning flights from Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay in the 80s.
I flew the combi many times between Kodiak and Anchorage during my 32 years on the island. I seem to remember that it was a 737-200, which had a smaller rear passenger cabin than the -400 (2/3 cargo, 1/3 passengers most of the time).
In 1968 I flew to Tokyo en-route to Korea for assignment on a 707 combi out of Seattle. Nothing special I remember and extremely long takeoff roll because of the full passenger, freight and fuel load. The tree at the end of the runway were awfully close to the bottom of the plane. Made sense to me at the time.
I'd love to see the inside of one of these... If only there was a site I could search for anything of interest. :)
My memory is a little vague, but as I recall we sat facing a partition that appeared designed to be movable/relocatable so the cargo-pax ratio could be changed. It had a door or doors and when opened you could see all the stuff they had loaded.
This was back before Alaska acquired Wien, we referred to the (twice weekly?) flights as the arrival of the "Weenie Bird".
This was back before Alaska acquired Wien, we referred to the (twice weekly?) flights as the arrival of the "Weenie Bird".
I remember flying on MarkAir's -200 combi, gravel kit and all. It had a partition... fiberglass or something to that effect. I remember there was a handful of rows in the back... it got pretty rank at times... hauling fish has a way of doing that...
