Pan Am Unbuckled: A Very Plane Diary (15 page)

Sydney Base

Sydney was a flight service temporary base that Pan Am set up in order to have extra flight attendants in positions— as needed down line. Assignment in Sydney was for a month at-a-time. The base assignment seemed to be either very hard to get (everyone wanted it) or it was almost foisted on us. Some people, like myself, thought the idea of having the chance to live a month in Australia was a great idea—while others dreaded the idea that they would be stranded and away from their home for that amount of time. My best friend from childhood, Renness Mary, was living there and teaching school in Cronulla—a suburb of Sydney.

Pan Am put their crew up in their Inter Continental Hotel in downtown Sydney. Everything was paid for, plus a very generous per-diem. The job amounted to being assigned certain days—where we absolutely had to be in the hotel by the phone, ready to take whatever assignment scheduling needed us to take. This happened if an incoming flight had lost someone due to illness or if they found the passenger load for an outgoing flight was going to be a far larger number than they anticipated. Sydney base was to take up the slack.

The Inter Continental was within walking distance of the downtown financial district and an area called ‘the Rocks’—famous for its pub crawls and its night-life. If I wasn’t on the beach in Cronulla with Renness Mary and her friends, we were crashing in my Inter Continental Hotel room— after having too much fun at ‘The Rocks’. The Sydney base manager was not your typical Aussie male. He lacked chauvinistic tendencies (as was sometimes encountered), and was thoughtful about asking us if we had what we needed, etc. Every two or three days he called each of us— to check in and see if we were all right— and if we were being ‘taken care of’. He may have been keeping tabs for scheduling, but he always made us feel like he cared about our welfare.

I was there for the Month of March 1973, and in that time, I only got assigned two trips. The first trip was to join an R&R flight back to Vietnam, and I was assigned to work the flight as far as Darwin. After being in Sydney for a while—with its level of sophistication—it wasn’t hard at all to slide into Darwin’s version of dress: t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops. Since I worked only the leg as far as Darwin, I was stranded there for a few days—taking full advantage of Darwin’s beaches and water skiing.

The one extravagant purchase I made while in Sydney was a full-length Australian red fox fur coat. It would be highly politically incorrect these days. But, it was gorgeous and kept me warm for years in Vermont.

My second flight was for the leg of a flight to Fiji—where I met Dr. Lewis, ‘The Adventurer’—with whom I was destined to sail with around the Caroline Islands for a whole month (
South Seas Trimaran
).

Tokyo Base

I was very lucky to get a temporary one-month assignment in Tokyo for May, 1974. It was part of my big scheme with my wedding. Doug and I were married April 21
^st
of that year, and I had set it up so that we would spend the whole month of May— on our honeymoon— in Japan. Doug had been a grand Japanophile for many years— so much so that he had set up our first-ever joint checking account at the Sumitomo Bank. Everything was going according to plan until Doug announced that “Oh, that visa thing you told me to get three months earlier? Ugh…I haven’t gotten around to it.” E-gads!

Doug and I were in San Francisco, en route to Japan for our honeymoon—with NO VISA FOR DOUG! It was literally the Emperor’s Birthday, so the Embassy and Consulate were closed. Thank goodness for Pan Am and their connections. One phone call, and many favors later—a Japanese Embassy person met us and issued Doug a ‘Tourist Visa’ so he could fly out with me the next day to Tokyo. I worked as crew on the flight and Doug got to ride non-rev in First Class.

The Pan Am crew layover hotel was the Keio Plaza, and Doug and I were assigned a room on the 43
^rd
floor. It was exactly like the room from the movie
Lost in Translation
with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson— that was our room and that was our view! Because I had to be available for trip assignments at any minute, I spent a lot of time in that room. In anticipation of this, I brought along my Singer Featherweight sewing machine—and I’m glad I did. During that month, I completed what’s called a ‘silk-puff quilt’ while sitting in my room with my little Singer machine— sewing away on 120V of electricity—waiting to be assigned a flight.

Doug, on the other hand, was free to go when-and-where he wished—which he did. My former London-based roommates, Sherry and Sandy, just happened to be in Tokyo that month as well. Since they were on scheduled flights, their layover time was their own— and they took Doug along. They visited temples, rode the bullet train, drank beer out of soft-drink dispensers in the subway stations, dined on tempura and sushi and had an absolutely wonderful honeymoon — without me.

Doug and I did get enough time to fly to Hokkaido and Kyoto. We stayed in wonderful Ryokons— Japanese country inns— and walked through Zen and Bonsai gardens. We saw more than one sumo wrestling match and even survived an interminable Noh play. The Keio Plaza is in the Shinjuku section of Tokyo, which has a very active night life. Doug certainly enjoyed the sake and thought it tasted much better while consuming it in Japan. I ended up being assigned to only one flight out of Tokyo that month—an overnight pattern to Hong Kong.

Los Angeles Base

In 1989 Pan Am officially shut down the San Francisco base as part of the restructuring on the slippery slide into bankruptcy. Over time, Pan Am had started selling off routes to United, American and Delta, and eventually there was no reason to have a base in SF as they had sold off so many of their SFO routes. Flight service was given some options and most of us took the option to transfer to LA. The idea was that we might not make the move to live in LA, but with so many Californians commuting between Northern and Southern California, there was a way to remain a resident of SF and work out of the LA base.

The LAX and SFO bases were very different. The general demeanor of the LA base was attuned to Hollywood-esque ideas like make-up and who you were seen with. Briefings didn’t just include the SIL, but specifically which movie stars were in the SIL. For those of us commuting, there was one motel near LAX that had made a business off of our commuters. It was cute enough, although I never stayed there long enough to enjoy it. I was either trying to get some rest before a long haul to Tokyo or trying to get rested after a trip—before waiving minimum at-home rest to go back out to get in my hours.

SF had had such a sense of history. It was the base from which the China Clipper flew over the Golden Gate in the first ever trans-Pacific flight. The flying boats landing in Treasure Island, all the different troupe movements during WWII—Pan Am and aviation histories blended in SF. In LA it was just a business— and a dying one at that. There was a feeling in the air that something was terribly wrong and it was not going to turn out well. Interestingly enough, no one seemed to anticipate that Pan Am would cease to exist. It was hard to imagine a world without Pan Am playing a dominant role. After the fact, I heard someone say “well it was the flying Pennsylvania Railroad.” My memories about LA are all wrapped up in the sadness of Pan Am ceasing to exist.

To many of us employees of Pan American World Airways, the big decline happened after Lockerbie— the bombing of Flight 103. Of course, before that, there were years of financial woes for Pan Am. And I even remember a pilot sharing with me, at one time, a report of Pan Am’s expenses vs. revenues—showing that even if we had flown every leg of every flight completely full, Pan Am was losing money. There are many well-documented books that explain how Pan Am’s landing fees were too high, that their fuel costs were too high, that their access to domestic passengers was thwarted, and that the US government never adequately supported their “unofficial flagship carrier”. Those of us who could never imagine a world without Pan Am, were devastated by Pan Am’s demise in 1991. It marked the end of an era.

We hope you have enjoyed your flight with us

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