PHOTOS COURTESY ALOHA AIRLINES
"Hawaii 5-0" stars James MacArthur, Jack Lord and Zulu hop off an Aloha Airlines "Funbird" during filming in the early 1970s.
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Joining dad at work was like taking a walk in the clouds
My name is Stanford J. Fichtman, son of Stan Fichtman, former vice president of maintenance of Aloha Airlines from 1969 to 1984. The memories of Aloha Airlines, needless to say, permeate throughout me.
There are many. My dad, "Pop," would take me out to the hangar there at Honolulu International every Saturday. It truly was a ritual and was my first interaction with airplanes. I would walk down the hallway and enter the hangar, followed by what seemed to be stairs that reached for the sky. We'd enter his office, where there were models of airplanes.
More times than not, my father and I would walk around the hangar. First it was the maintenance dispatch office. There, I'd see the various assignment sheets hanging off the walls, followed by a 24-hour clock on the wall. A friend of my father's -- Michael Dale -- would typically be in the office. He'd always greet me with a "Hey Stanboy, how ya doing?" I missed him when he retired.
Then it would be off to the engineering station. There, engines taken off of airplanes would be on the rigs ready for whatever maintenance was needed -- overhaul, switch-out of parts, etc. A kindly Chinese gentlemen named Calvin Loo was whom I assumed to be the boss. My father and he got along, and he'd smile at me whenever I was in their presence.
I then remember frequently going through a doorway near the engine-teardown department, which looked out on the tarmac and all the airplanes. I remember that it was windy in that area because of all the jet blast coming from the planes across the way. I thought it was cool. I remember once in a while Pop would take me out to the tarmac to look at an airplane. He'd been the one to order golf carts to be used for excursions like this.
Once, my friend Mark McCloud came with us to the airport. Pop took us all out on one of these golf carts to the airplanes. On other excursions, Pop would take me to the employees' cafeteria at the airport. We'd climb into an Aloha-owned car and drive out to the mainland terminal.
I remember the hamburgers. Years later I went to that cafeteria again and had a hamburger from there -- not quite the same, as it was less greasy than it was when I was a kid.
To this day, when I am flying interisland, I typically try to get a window seat on the right side of the airplane. When the airplane drives down toward the runway, I always look inside when passing the Aloha hangar, to see how it has changed. It did change over time -- the painting, the new signage -- but I can still see that stairway up to Pop's old office still there.
The memories -- these are just a few of many -- unfortunately will be all I will have left when Aloha finally closes its doors.
Stanford J. Fichtman
PHOTOS COURTESY ALOHA AIRLINES
Keola and Kapono Beamer with mother Nona are welcomed aboard a DC-3, then the workhorse of the airline.
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PHOTOS COURTESY ALOHA AIRLINES
A DC-3 also welcomed the likes of Frank Sinatra.
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