The 8008 was: Blinky lights WAS: The SR71 Blackbird was designed ENTIRELYwith slide rules 685

at the height of the internet bubble, american put in non-stopes between sjc and bos as well as sjc and aus.

in the early 80s, i use to take twa #44 red-eye sfo to kennedy a couple times a month on monday night and return on twa #857(? ... the tel aviv, rome, kennedy, sfo flight) on friday afternoon. twa went backrupt and then i switched to panam (for the monday night redeye). panam then sold its pacific fleet to united to concentrate on atlantic routes. i then switched to american for the monday night redeye ... although sometimes took united (both my twa miles and my panam miles just evaporated).

i do blaim twa for direct (non-connecting) flights with change of equipment. in the very early 70s, the overnight parking fee at sfo was such that it was cheaper for twa to fly the short hop to sjc and park the plane overnight there. then in the morning the plane would fly one where the equipment continued to seattle ... and the other was a change of equipment in sfo that went to kennedy. the explanation was that on reservation screens all the direct (non-connecting) flights are listed first ... followed by connecting flights. The change of equipment gimick ... managed to get "connecting" flights listed at the front along with all the other direct flights (direct flights had a much higher probability of being reserved than connecting flights that appeared later on the screen). After that, i started to notice some number of other flights (typically with multiple flight numbers) that involved the "direct" gimick with change of equipment.

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