Braniff’s “Cowboy”
Recently I ran across an old box from my younger years and in it I found a newsletter from the airline school I attended, Atlantic Airlines School in Kansas City, MO. The Lighthouse, as the newsletter was named, was from November of 1969. That was decades ago and in a past century. Wow I’m getting old!
Not as old as when I went through the newsletter and I read that Braniff International Airlines contracted with Atlantic Airlines Schools to provide access to the airlines Programmed Airline Reservation System. (PARS). They proudly announced 3 training centers using the new 
cathode-ray tube (CRT) terminal units that tied directly into Braniff’s computerized reservation system in Dallas.
Thus, Atlantic Airlines Schools becomes the only private airline personnel training school to have direct access for training purposes to an actual airline reservation system. Nicknamed “Cowboy” by Braniff, this system serves a number of other major carriers including, Western, National, Continental, Delta, Pan American, Mohawk, Frontier, Allegheny and North Central.
Wow! How many of these airlines still exist.!!??
In addition to that the newsletter included an rendering of what a future airport terminal might look like with the concept of elevating the 
Boeing 707’s 30 feet in the air so that their wings overlap those of the Boeing 747 jumbo jets. Boasting the system will save substantial parking space and will permit the smooth flow of passengers on or off airplanes on two levels of the terminal simultaneously.
In addition to that was the announcement that the “Concorde is Supersonc!”
In the newsletter it states “The most amazing thing about the Concorde is that it’s flying!” says Sir George Edwards managing director of the British Aircraft Corporation in Weybridge, England. “There was never any doubt that we and the French have the technology to make the Concorde a success.” “It was more the case of getting the politicians in London and Paris to believe in the project and come up with the money to provide the necessary research and development.”
WOW we’ve come a long way baby!!!
