Piedmont Airlines began operations in 1948 from its home base of Winston-Salem, North Carolina and eventually grew into a national carrier with a route network stretching to the west coast (and later to London’s Gatwick Airport). The east coast was still its strength with the largest frequencies operating from hubs in Charlotte, Baltimore and Dayton. Everything I’ve read about the carrier seems to indicate it was a beloved airline by passengers and employees, and the absorption by USAir in 1989 was heartbreak to many. The former Henson Airlines operates currently as Piedmont Airlines as a regional carrier within US Airways operating Dash-8 aircraft.
Here is Piedmont’s Boeing 727-200 seat map in a two-cabin configuration seating 12 passengers in first class and 134 in coach. In first class you’d find me in row 3 or 4 away from the galley and row 5 certainly looks appealing in coach, but I wonder if there is really as much room at that bulkhead as what appears. Otherwise I’d select a window seat a few rows back for optimal camera use forward of the wing. How horrible would rows 27 and 28 be? Ouch!
Where would you sit?
Why do they put “buffer” in for the coach section between smoking and non-smoking? It seems to me that the buffer would be non-smoking.
I know… it was fairly ridiculous to attempt to “buffer” the smoke. I flew on many, many smoking flights (some when I was a smoker & afterwords). I’d go through a pack just on the LAX-SYD flights because there was virtually nothing else to do. How absolutely disgusting in retrospect!
There’s no buffer in First class, though 🙂
I still remember from early 90’s (when I started flying in the first place..) flying with a friend he walked to back of the plane for a smoke. He had bought some pretty heavy tobacco (hand rolled) from the Netherlands and even as a smoker looked pretty high when he returned to our non-smoking seat 🙂