I fished this out of my really old e-mails. No pics and not very detailed, but it's probably worthy of a post for a trip 15 years ago. It was the very first time I ever saw moving maps and data on the IFE!

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Date: 6 July 1995
Flight: Delta DL 1729
Routing: DFW-PDX
Aircraft: 752
Seat: Economy Class

10:27 am CDT -- Airborne! We lift out of Dallas-Fort Worth airport southbound under a sky dabbled with low morning stratus. Our Delta 757 turns northwest over Fort Worth and starts our climb to 35,000 feet. I have a right window seat.. the middle seat is empty.. a plump lady of about 40 is in the aisle seat. She's quite friendly.. I mentioned my journey to Korea and she talked about her experiences having been over there.

11:00 am CDT -- We cross over Childress, following the snaky brown Red River, which demarcates the Texas/Oklahoma border. The town of Childress is sort of the gateway to the Texas Panhandle from Dallas. I recognize the airfield and highways below, as well as the famous "Estelline S-curve" which is notorious as a speed-trap. Kind of amazing how fast we move.. Childress is a 4 1/2 hour drive from Dallas. We clocked in at just under 33 minutes. Meanwhile, the flight attendents are in the middle of passing out snacks (small ham sandwiches & potato chips) with drinks. Outside everything looks so flat, and it's mostly farm fields (including those odd circular irrigated ones).

11:09 am CDT -- We are over Amarillo. I can't see the city, since we're right over it, but it's easy to make out I-40 and all the other roads converging under us. The inflight movie is now starting, so most of us close our windowshades. Funny that the movie they're showing is "Outbreak" -- I had made a special trip to the theater with a friend just two days ago to see it! Headsets are $4, but I can watch them on the overhead screens. Thankfully in 757's, films are shown on -real- video screens suspended every 4 rows throughout the plane. That beats the hazy projection screens way up front that you sometimes see on the DC-10's and 747's. Guess I'll finish my lunch, read (my book is "Hot Zone", by coincidence), and look at the movie every now and then.

1:02 pm CDT -- The movie is over. I'm tired of reading my book, so I pull the shades and glance out the window. This has to be Idaho.. there are broad valleys with wide crop fields, and barren foothills leading up into forested mountain ranges The clouds are pretty much scattered.. looks like a couple of altocumulus layers and some thick cirrus at our level off to the distant north and ahead.

2:01 pm CDT -- After a long approach through solid overcast, we descend into a rainy Oregon day, flying alongside the Columbia river from the east. We touch down uneventfully and taxi to the gate.


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Date: 6 July 1995
Flight: Delta DL ????? (does anyone with an old timetable know the flight # and scheduled times??)
Routing: DFW-PDX
Aircraft: M11
Seat: Economy Class

2:40 pm CDT -- Our flight is called. We board the big MD-11. What an easy connection! I was only five gates from my other flight. Unfortunately the flight is about 90% full, so there aren't really any places to stretch out. Thankfully I have a left-side window seat over the wing.. kind of nice to be able to occasionally ignore what's going on in the plane.

3:15 pm CDT -- We take off from Portland, eastbound, and make a majestic left turn over the Columbia River. It is clearing out a bit, but still there are decks of mid and high clouds, especially up to the north and west. We climb through them and head northwest.

5:00 pm CDT -- Dinner is served.. fish, chicken, or beef. I opt for the fish.

5:25 pm CDT -- Dinner is done. One of the flight attendents passes by and complements my hair.

5:56 pm CDT -- One of the most innovative things I've seen on an airliner is on the movie screens in front of us: a moving map display. It pinpoints the location of the airplane against a topographic map of the world. Glancing at it, I see that we are skirting the southern coast of Alaska, probably no more than 200 miles south of Valdez. A few minutes ago when I first looked up from my book and saw the display, it said we had 3888 miles to go. Now that I pulled out my notebook and typed this, we have 3821 miles to go. I think we started out with 5300 or so. Unfortunately, there's nothing to see outside.. looks like bright midday sunshine with a solid, featureless overcast below us. I decide to read some more.. there may be a movie on later that I might be interested in.

7:51 pm CDT -- We're in the Bering Sea between Shemya and St. Paul's Island.. 2740 miles to go. The first movie (forgot its name) just ended.. we're mostly just sitting in the dark.. some people sleeping.

10:50 pm CDT -- A long second feature came on, a black and white 1940's presentation... now we're thirty minutes into a third movie, "Roommates". The moving map has not been on in hours, so I have no idea where we are.. seeing as we're 3 hours out of Korea, I'd say near the Japanese/Russian Kuril Islands. Keeping the shades down, so no weather report yet.. but it's still bright, broad daylight out there.

12:16 am CDT -- Somewhere over the Sea of Japan, we're 570 miles out of Seoul. The movie is over. Seems like it was another lifetime ago when we took off.

1:10 am CDT (3:10 pm Korea) -- The moving map display is back on, showing our track arcing across the Aleutians, south of Hokkaido, Japan, along the western Japanese coast, into southeastern Korea, and straight northwest across the country. We're not far from Seoul, and the moving map display even shows us zoom-ins of our position on the country, as well as readouts of altitude, groundspeed, and winds, splattered up there on the movie screens for all to read! This is COOL stuff for us "control" freaks!!

1:40 am CDT (3:40 pm Korea) -- Touchdown at Seoul! The moving map display is still there, in fact, I can see that we touched down at 170 mph. It is very hazy and about 80 degrees, quite humid.. very similar to a summer day in New Jersey. This is where I'll stop, because the Korea experience is worthy of another letter altogether.

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