San Francisco International Airport, California, September 1992


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San Francisco International Airport, California, September 1992

Edited by David Barth February 2016. Photos were taken by David Barth.

San Francisco International Airport, California, September 1992
San Francisco International Airport,
California, September 1992.
Carol Mikesh enjoying the ambiance of the United Airlines Red Carpet Club at the San Francisco Airport while we were waiting to board a United 747 to Hong Kong. Note that she is resting her feet on a bag without wheels. This was before wheeled bags became popular.

After Continental Airlines merged with United Airlines in 2011, the club name was changed to United Club. Carol's partner, David Barth, had purchased a life membership to the club around 1985 which carried over from the Red Carpet Club to the United Club and was still in use at the time of this writing in 2016.

San Francisco International Airport, California, September 1992
San Francisco International Airport,
California, September 1992.
A Boeing 747-100 is at the right. This was the first version of the 747 with a small upper deck. To the left is a United 747SP, a special purpose plane for longer range flights, ordered by United to fly the Pacific routes that it had purchased from Pan American World Airways when that airline went out of business in the mid-1980s.

The white and blue plane in the background is a 747-300, a new plane at the time, sometimes called a "Big Top" because of the longer upper deck. At this time, the 747-400 had not been produced.

When Carol and David began flying Pacific routes in the mid-1980s, United didn't own any planes with sufficient range to fly the shortest great-circle route from the continental US to Hong Kong (from Seattle). United leased some specially modified long-range DC-10s from one of the Canadian airlines.

One problem with these planes was that although the fuel tanks were just large enough to make the trip if headwinds weren't strong, the toilet tanks had not been enlarged, and by the end of the 13-hour flight, there was about a half-inch of water sloshing on the bathroom floors. There was one flight we made on a DC-10 where there were strong headwinds, and we had to stop in Taipei to refuel before proceeding to Hong Kong.