I remember the old terminal well, and the joy of waking off the plane into a wall of humidity.
Also, you can’t believe how exciting it was to have the covered luggage area that eventually got closed in!! lol. Ah, simple times.
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That first color photo is basically what the airport looked like when my family moved to Raleigh. Imagine having started your cross-country journey at SFO and then landing there!
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and just to round out the old RDU pics, here are some pics of the old red-roof terminal “C” built for AA’s 1987-1995 RDU hub (same era as when Nashville had an AA hub built there, too), and “C” was demolished for our what is now “Terminal 2”. For those who didn’t know, AA also had nonstops to San Juan, Caribbean islands, London, Paris, and Bermuda from RDU. Whole list is located [here] but would be huge to show an image of it. Enjoy! (AARDUhub).
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I remember an advertisement from Midway Airlines after the AA hub closed. It went something like this: It showed a novel and labeled it Atlanta layover, a magazine and labeled it Charlotte layover, and a comic strip and labeled it RDU layover. The whole point is that connections were fast and you didn’t have to wait forever for your connecting flight.
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Wow we used to have an American Eagle flight to Asheville and Greenville N.C… how interesting!
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@evan.j.bost there were even flights to NEW BERN, KINSTON and JACKSONVILLE NC lol
full list of nonstops from RDU from 87 to about 1995: source: [AARDUhub]
Akron/Canton, OH
Albany, NY
Allentown/Bethlehem, PA
Asheville, NC
Atlanta, GA
Augusta, GA
Baltimore, MD
Bermuda
Boston, MA
Brunswick, GA
Buffalo, NY
Cancun, Mexico
Charleston, SC
Charleston, WV
Charlotte, NC
Charlottesville, VA
Chicago, IL O’Hare
Cleveland, OH
Columbia, SC
Columbus, OH
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Daytona Beach, FL
Detroit, MI Metro
Fayetteville, NC
Florence, SC
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Fort Myers, FL
Grand Cayman
Greenbrier/Lewisburg, WV
Greensboro/High Point, NC
Greenville, NC
Greenville/Spartanburg, SC
Harrisburg, PA
Hartford, CT/Springfield, MA
Hilton Head Island, SC
Jacksonville, FL
Jacksonville, NC
Kinston, NC
Knoxville, TN
Lexington, KY
London, England Gatrwick
Long Island/Macarthur, NY
Lynchburg, VA
Melbourne, FL
Miami, FL
Myrtle Beach, SC
Nashville, TN
Nassau, Bahamas
New Bern, NC
Newburgh, NY
Newport News, VA
New York, NY Kennedy
New York, NY LaGuardia
Newark, NJ
Norfolk, VA
Orlando, FL
Paris, France Orly
Pensacola, FL
Philadelphia, PA
Pittsburgh, PA
Providence, RI
Richmond, VA
Roanoke, VA
Rochester, NY
Saint Croix, VI
Saint Maarten, NI
Saint Petersburg, FL
Saint Thomas, VI
San Juan, PR
Sarasota/Bradenton, FL
Savannah, GA
Syracuse, NY
Tampa, FL
Tri-City/Bristol, TN
Washington, DC Dulles
Washington, DC National
West Palm Beach, FL
Wilmington, NC
source: [AARDUhub]
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I used to fly the flight from Greensboro to Raleigh all the time to catch a connection. It was completely normal back then. It was a very very small plane. No one would even think of connecting from those two airports by plane these days.
I do remember that flight crashed and killled the Bass Master champion in the early 90’s. The Bass Master event was held in Greensboro and was a significant event.
When Greensboro landed the Continental hub, I no longer had to fly American as much. Hard to believe NC had 3 hubs at one point
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Yeah - wouldn’t just be faster to drive?
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Interstate was only 4 lanes back then and security much easier and faster. It just seemed normal to buy a ticket starting from Greensboro. Everyone did it (alas there would be no flight). US Air to from Greensboro to Charlotte also, but that drive was a little longer.
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I flew back from Chicago on United long ago and the flight had a stop in Greensboro. Greensboro to RDU had a 9 minute flight time. It took longer to get to and from the terminals.
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It’s still four lanes at the 40/85 split. Why this bottleneck hasn’t been resolved I’m not sure.
The I-40 widening is in the works. One of the surveyors I use told me they had just finished a huge surveying project throughout this corridor. I’m not sure when construction will start, but if NCDOT is spending money on surveying many miles of highway, something must be moving forward.
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There was no split until late 80’s. That section of 40 did not exist
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I think @Francisco was talking about the number of lanes on 40, not the split itself. 40 was not born that way; the stretch of 40 between 15-501 (exit 270) and 147 (exit 279) was also only 2 lanes wide per direction until the early-mid 2000s.
It’s still that way between exits 259 and 270 is because planners used garbage assumptions when they designed the widening.
When NCDoT studied the lane expansions in the 90s, they screwed up the evidence that showed where/how they had to add lanes. Instead of looking at 40 as a part of a network across the Triangle, they only looked at Durham County traffic and treated Orange County as “out-of-scope”. If they included Orange County traffic, though, the lane expansions probably would’ve happened up there too.
Full disclosure: I’m having a hard time finding where I read this, since it was just a throwaway comment in the middle of some article I ran into a long time ago.
The original plan was to figure out how exactly to lay out the new lanes, landscaping etc. by this year, start buying rights-of-way in 2021, and to begin construction in '23. This project’s now on hold, though, because of NCDOT funding freezes which are 100% their own fault.
pre 9/11 there were no ID checks to match you with your ticket. If you didnt need to check luggage you could waltz in thru the metal detectors (bringing whoever wanted to tag along even if not flying), and if not crowded, be at your gate at RDU very very quickly, especially if you got dropped off. Our AA flight to London came about during this era, and switched from London Gatwick to London Heathrow within the past 10 - 15 years. And for those who don’t know, there’s a massive AA reservations call center in Cary (up in the woods behind Macgregor downs shopping center) that I believe still employs 500-1000 agents.
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I remember I took a trip in early 80’s. where flew from RDU to Tampa with another guy to instill a computer system. We both had briefcase style tool kits that we carried on with no questions. They were full of all sorts to tools. pointy and sharp, like box cutters. I laugh now and say we could have took the plane apart as we where flying down to FL. How times have changed.
------ But story on how it also depends on who you are and where. I few years ago I was in western China with a Chinese friend. She had bought a fancy ceremonial knife in a shop that was suppose to be like what the locals used ( I claim it could have belonged to a Star Trek Klingon). She put in checked bag at airport. As we where walking to gate. we got called over by security as they wanted to know who’s bag with the knife. We when into a security office and after she had a fairly long “chat” with security she come over to my side of room and said security was upset over the knife but if I said it was mine they may let it pass. So I said sure and one of security guys same over and asked to see my passport. I pull it out and all he did was look at cover and see was American and said OK and waived for others to let us pass, with the knife staying in bag. Found often in China that US passport got a lot of favors. But have not been back for 3 years so may not be worth as much now. ------- sorry for long post guess just getting board with virus isolation working from home.
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For whatever reason, the planners did not initially take into account the traffic problems created by narrowing down the highway from six lanes to four at the 15-501 interchange in their analysis every two years. When they finally did, they realized they had a major problem and the widening project jump up in priority.
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I remember that I got stopped once at security because they thought that I had a bomb in my briefcase. It was just a tape measure. All they saw was a metal spiral object.
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Really missing the emoji reactions right now…
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reactions are always on topic but I finally fixed it. In addition, I think I learned how it works from a code point-of-view and will be more diligent with updates so as not to break it.
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