Moan about the lack of hockey games on at the sports bar.
Calling the airline or going to a city ticket office I get, of course. And I can see that the person you talked to might be the same person who would check you in at the terminal when you got there. However, it was the airline I was calling. The idea of calling the airport sounds like there was some onsite office where some poor overworked clerks were expected to keep scores of daily flights from different airlines straight, all in the days before any computerization at all Most of these OTR episodes were recorded between the late 1940s until late 1962, when the Johnny Dollar series finally ended.
AFAIK airline reservations have been computerized since at least the early 1960s, which was when American Airlines rolled out the SABRE system. I fly very little as a rule but over the years have gotten my reservations and tickets just about every way there’s been to do it–calling up, visiting an offsite ticket office, and Internet, both by browser and an early 1990s end-user version of SABRE as a subscriber to GEnie, an early online service that was green-screen based.
In these plot arcs the absconding perpetrator usually wants to leave the country, and Havana was still an option at the time these programs were produced. Other than that there was no particular reason I chose it.
Mid fifties–not too far from your age, I think?
The 1950s writers were thinking airports worked like train stations.
However, in the regulated 50s, that clerk could have access to a binder with all the day’s timetables for his airport, set long in advance (no searching for every possible route/connection permutation - a book of the routes authorized by the CAB), and to the day’s list of known cancellations. He would NOT know if those specific flights were sold out or necessarily if they were in the middle of a delay, for that he would have to give you the airline’s desk.
“Do you have any flights to Havana tonight”
[sound of flipping pages][“Muttering… Havana… flipflipflip hmm, South Sun and Rum Seas… OK… flipflipflip Rum Seas… nothing… flipflip South Sun… ah!”]
“Seems we got one departure, South Sun Airways via Miami at ten. You can call them at DRinkup 7-2345”
Be polite to TSA agents, flight attendants, and your fellow travelers.
There is an old joke, with a heavy dab of truth, that once you’re a tourist in a country it’s best to explain away your use of English by saying that you are Canadian, since Canadians are usually much better received than ugly Americans. This has nothing to do with customs agents or anyone else you give your passport to, but with the general population.
Pronounce it ‘aboot’, say ‘eh’ and ‘right?’ a lot. Talk about the Leaf’s game. Conspicuously wear maple leaf themed clothing.
Now I’m trying to remember the name of the softcover book that had all the flights in it. We used to use it at work, I guess in the 70s (?). In that decade, that was how you’d look up flights (assuming you had the book).
That would work with travel to most countries but Cuba is an exception. It’s generally illegal for US citizens to travel there so the pretense of being Canadian in order to visit Havana would require producing documentation.
Looking online, it appears it’s fairly easy for an American to evade this law. Canada and Mexico apparently have no interest in enforcing the American embargo and airlines in those countries will happily sell an American citizen a ticket to Cuba. The Cuban government is also cooperative and does not turn back Americans or call attention to American citizens who visit Cuba. The big problem mentioned is you can’t use American credit cards, ATM cards, or cell phones in Cuba. People also claim that the American enforcement of the law is pretty minimal. Some people say they’ve received warning letters for having visited Cuba but supposedly there haven’t been any actual prosecutions in several years. However this is off the topic as none of it includes claiming to be a Canadian.
IIRC you don’t need to pretend to be Canadian. You just have to fly from Canada. I don’t think the Cubans assist the USA in enforcing the ban on travel to there.
I think in the context of the OP, the police would call whoever was managing the control tower and ask what flights had left in the specific window of time. then they could call the airline(s) desk(s) to check. Of course, the perp needs no ID and can pay cash without much suspicion, so they would ask the airline desk if anyone walked in and bought a ticket in the last 6 hours, male, 5’10", about 50 eyars old, with black greasy hair - say.
yeah, when online sales through Expedia, Travelocity, etc. became more common, airlines found that there were more sales to be had by dropping their prices for online. Eventually they found the prices too tight to allow for commissions, and got tired of playing midle-man. They told the travel agents to charge their own fees.
But that was done as a matter of course. Every airport had an information desk. People would come in to the airport and ask at the desk: “When is my flight to Aruba?” The clerk would have a book that gives all the information (yes, there were flight boards, too, but people still ask).
The information desk still works that way today, though it’s computerized. Before then, they would have an airline schedule that was updated whenever there were changes (airlines even today have pretty set schedules, with flights to any given destination leaving at the same time each day). It could be a few sheets or a thick book, and the information desk would be able to look up any flight. If you called them, they had the information, so it was no different from walking up to them asking for it – their job, after all.
And why would the Johnny Dollar show use something that wasn’t common procedure? If people generally called a travel agent or something else to get tonight’s flights, why didn’t they write it that way? It’s sort of like asking why the prices on Dollar’s expense account are so low.
I am to understand that Cuban authorities will not stamp American passports as to avoid creating a record that an American visited Cuba which could be used against them later. So it’s a little past “not assisting the USA in enforcing its ban” to “assisting Americans it evading the ban”, even if in just a little way.
It was the OAG, which I think stood for Official Airline Guide. It was relatively easy to use when the fares were either first class or coach. After the proliferation of fare codes you were never sure if you were getting the best price.
True. But many countries don’t stamp passports anyway. Unless the Cubans routinely stamp other countries’ passports and avoid stamping American ones, I wouldn’t assume this was a deliberate policy directed at evading the embargo.
My understanding (as retold by someone who had ventured to Cuba in recent years) was that they were, in fact, stamping passports for every other country. I imagine that Cuba is a little old-school on passport control procedures in general.