80 years and counting

"On May 15, 1930, the world's first stewardess took to the sky and changed the air travel experience forever. She and seven other nurses were the industry's first professional flight attendants. They were hired to calm and comfort customers who were apprehensive about flying in those early days. Much like today, they were safety experts, emergency responders, service professionals, mediators and counselors.

"First Stewardess" Ellen Church began the journey from San Francisco to Chicago. Four stewardesses -- one for each assigned segment -- were staged along the flight’s route to complete the 13-stop, 20-hour trip on a Boeing 80A with 14 seats."

With our number 1 Flight Attendant having flown with United for over 50 years, just imagine all he has seen (yes our number 1 is a "He") through the years. All the changes, improvements, technological advances that we take for granted today, he experienced it all first hand.

In my 15 years with the company, the changes I have seen touch mostly work rules, onboard service and duties. The aircrafts have been the same with different paint jobs and cabin interiors. I have always wondered why we did not invest in making a cheaper version of the Concorde. Unveiled in the 60s that aircraft was an amazing feat of technology. The fastest commercial jetliner ever built. It became evident rather quickly though that the cost of flying that machine would not make it accessible to a lot of people. It became a sign of luxury until it was merely a sign of patriotic British and French spirit. But we never tried to improve on the Concorde. Instead we offered a "better inflight experience"
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The Airbus A380 (which we are not getting) is the only new big change in commercial aviation in years just because of it's size. The Dreamliner Boeing 787 is still going through testing and its delivery has been delayed over and over. We are scheduled to acquire some Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 in a few years but with the looming merger with Continental I am not sure how much of our long term planning is and will still be relevant.

Crazy night at O'Hare

O'Hare airport is a ZOO tonight. Thunderstorms in the area have caused
havoc in the flight schedules. I have never seen the Departures and
Arrivals screens with so much yellow. 95% of the flights are either
delayed or canceled. We finally made it here after a 3 hours delay and
now are working another delayed flight to Baltimore. .

Fiesta island

Marathon training today with Matt. We drove to Fiesta Island which is in the middle of Mission Bay Park, next to SeaWorld. Matt started running and slowly disappeared in the distance. I expected him to pass me at least a couple of time on our circuit. I guess I did pretty good since he never did. I walked the 17.6 miles in 3h20mn (4 times around the island). This was my longest walk so far and the best pace yet; 5.28mph. First time around was the warm-up and I felt great doing rounds 2 and 3. Doing round 4 took some will power though; I really felt it in my legs. The marathon is 26.2 miles so I would still have about 2 more hours at that pace. Now I am not so certain. The next long walk is 20 miles; about 4 hours. I know that I have to slow the pace a little bit if I want to keep the momentum and not fall apart.