[Mercedes] I’m currently…

[Curley McLain]

A friend of mine flew -57s for Eastern. Afterwards, he worked for NTSB, 
doing crashes.   I have not seen him for a few years.  Dunno if he is 
still doing the gig or if he hung up the wings.

> dan penoff.com via Mercedes <mailto:mercedes at okiebenz.com>
> December 19, 2025 at 8:17 PM
> To be honest I don’t recall who I flew within Canada, it was probably 
> Air Canada at the time. I did fly in the NWT a number of times on 
> “domestic” flights, if you want to call them that, often in a Twin 
> Otter or some oilfield beater depending on where and why I was going 
> somewhere. I stuck with NWA for nearly everything, as they could cover 
> almost all domestic locations with the exception of the SE and 
> Central/South America. Since they code-shared with KLM Middle East and 
> Europe were covered as well. I think I finished out my “career” with 
> NWA with around 3,000,000 miles over around eight years.
>
> I never kept track of miles on any other domestic carriers as I never 
> got enough to be of value.
>
> Fun Eastern Airlines story: Coming back from a job in the Carolinas 
> transiting ATL. Get to the gate and it’s empty. Aircraft is there but 
> not a soul in the way of passengers save for some other businessman 
> guy. Turns out all of the connections into MKE were able to make it 
> out on an earlier flight that had been delayed, so they took it. This 
> other guy and I were the only ones on an Eastern Airlines 727 flying 
> from ATL to MKE that night, as the equipment had to be there. Spent 
> the flight playing euchre with the FAs in First Class. Good meal and 
> booze, too, if we wanted it. This was just a few weeks before they 
> shut down operations, too, as I complained to the travel department 
> about booking me on Eastern for fear I would get stranded.
>
> Ahh, pre-9/11, those were the days.
>
> -D
>
>

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