Some great pics of SAA back in the day [Archive]

MarkLawrence

2008-01-02, 01:33 PM

Wow - those bring back memories!! The 747-SP's - the 747-200 Super B's - the A300B2's....those were the good old days...the 737-200's were the rage in those days too!

Seeing the A300 there reminds me of a story - I used to travel to Zimbabwe and the surrounding territories on business. When I used to go to Harare, it was always on a lunchtime flight on an A300 with 10 smoking rows at the back of the aircraft (now you can tell how long ago it was - smoking seats!!). This one particular flight - I could see flaps full, but hadn't heard the gear go down (the A300B2 you could always hear the gear drop - no matter where in the aircraft you sat). We descended lower and lower until about 500', when there was full power applied, the flaps came up to flaps 5. Everyone wondered what the heck was going on. Captain came on the intercom - sorry for this ladies and gentlemen - the air traffic controller has gone to lunch - yes - there was one of him, and he took his lunch break. We circled for about 20 minutes waiting for him to come back and then we landed....amazing...