Blog

What would have been lengthy coverage in Northwest’s house newsletter as well as mass media worldwide in April-May 1978 was quickly interrupted by the carrier’s four month long pilots’ strike. Passages had a delayed publication date and in August published only a two-page spread about Narita opening, with no celebrating… Read the coverage below:

From its opening in Spring 1978 to just before Delta’s exit in March 2020, here are maps showing the extent of Northwest’s passenger network through NRT every five years:

Soon you’ll be seeing this same model, restored by Jim Striplin, at the NWAHC Museum in Bloomington, MN.

The NWAHC Archive holds dozens of storage boxes and file cabinets’ worth of photographs from across the history of the company. We recently received several pages of slides taken in Hong Kong in 1973-74 documenting the painting process performed on one of the island’s iconic double-decker trams to create a full wrap-around advertisement for Northwest Orient and its new 747 service there. We’ve printed some of these in the December 2019 edition of REFLECTIONS, and are showing even more here at larger size. Click on the image to enlarge.

In researching this season’s feature article, I came across a number of gate maps from NWA and Republic timetables, as well as in WorldTraveler Magazine. I scanned unique ones and have assembled them here for your trips down memory lane…

We’ve never seen scans of these documents up on the Web before – sales and marketing brochures prepared by Saab in 1986 to promote the SF340 to Republic Airlines customers as well as to prospective airframe buyers. The center spread of “Republic Expression” has a nice ramp shot at Memphis, and in smaller photos there are ramp and gatehouse shots from Jackson, Mississippi as well. Aircraft-interior shots are in both documents, showing off the grey, burgundy, and dusty rose color scheme.

These are large, European-sized documents – click on the links below to open them in PDF form.

Supplementing our September 2019 issue of REFLECTIONS, we’ve found some contemporary articles in aviation journals for extra insight. Here’s one from the September 1985 issue of Professional Pilot magazine:

Professional Pilot granted reprint rights to Express I / Republic – we are republishing under Fair Use doctrine. We’ll give a plug, though – to subscribe to the magazine, go to https://www.propilotmag.com.

Supplementing our September 2019 issue of REFLECTIONS, we’ve found some contemporary articles in aviation journals for extra insight. Here’s one from the July 29, 1985 Aviation Week & Space Technology:

AW&ST granted reprint rights to Express I / Republic – we are republishing under Fair Use doctrine. We’ll give a plug, though – to subscribe to Aviation Week, including access to their 100 Year Archive, go to https://aviationweek.com.

Our feature article in this quarter’s REFLECTIONS is all about the evolution of the Memphis hub – from before Southern’s launch to after Delta’s dismantling. Let’s take a trip there with words and explore the city:

Scroll down for the solution…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

Our September 2019 issue of REFLECTIONS will feature a retrospective of service to the Memphis hub. As a side dish, here’s a scan from WorldTraveler’s May 2004 article on the city.

Click here to open the PDF file to view.

We’ve come across a cache of public-relations photos taken at the Minneapolis debut event for the 747-400 WorldPlane, and have scanned them to display for you here. Enjoy!