rickair7777

That seems too early for cell phones, at least for consumer mass market.

I had pagers in the 80's (military on call), I think the text pagers came in the early 90's at least for me.

Brick phones late 80's/early 90's but only for military ops, didn't carry those around town and none of my friends had anything like that.

Car phone early/mid 90's, it was actually a briefcase that would plug into the car or could be used standalone. Again not personal use but for work.

Pocket size handheld mid/late 90's, but again for work and most of my friends didn't have one. When I changed jobs around the turn of the century I actually didn't have a personal or work cell for a couple years, that came around 2002-ish.

ImSoSuss

yep, wasn't until the mid to late 00s until almost everybody had one.

Larry in TN

Pagers have been available back to around the mid-1960s.

Without one, you'd call crew scheduleing and ask to be away from the phone for an hour or two to do what you needed to do.

As others have said, the bigger problem was the 24-hour on-call with no oppertunity to rest between notification and report time.

AYLflyer

I remember the mid/late 90s my friends dad, who had a VP title in his name, not only had a car phone but he had a flip phone (I think it was the Startac) and we used to think it was the coolest and craziest thing. So yeah, mid 90s people definitely had phones but it was usually issued by an employer or you had a lot of money.

This is a good topic, and something I asked an older coworker of mine years ago. Before being an airline bum I flew corporate. During a day of multiple airport and FBO changes, while sitting in Teterboro I said "How the hell did you guys do this job before cell phones?". He laughed and said they either had beepers, or before that they would just fly to the destination, and if there was a change then the FBO receptionist would have a message waiting for them and they'd call the company or principal back from a landline. He also mentioned that the worst is when the owners would be early or late and you had no heads up. You would end up sitting for hours on end wondering where the hell your pax were, and if it was an unfamiliar airport with multiple FBOs, they may end up at the wrong one and you wouldn't know it until the other FBO called the one you were at looking to see if you're there.

It was the first time I really felt out of touch with the older guys because I cannot picture flying corporate aircraft around without the ability to be in constant touch with the owner or the company. Things change so much on the 91 side of aviation that it was mind blowing to think that you could land somewhere and have a message saying "Hey I know we said go to Teterboro, but we want you in Chicago instead."

Margaritaville

I got hired at Comair in 1998 after years of flying 135 with a beeper and show up ASAP or find a new job. I got my first cell phone then which was a Nokia 5110 which was hot tech at the time! I think 100-150 minutes a month was typical. I want to say it was like $49/mo which is about $99 in today's money. You only used it when you really needed to because if you went over your minutes it got stupid expensive quick and $15-20K a year didn't go very far. It was a game changer. Reserve on the boat as long as you weren't offshore!

Yes we were on reserve 24 hours a day with a 1-1.5 hour show time. They could call you any time for 4-10 legs in a Brasilia and you had to be there. That was at the plane btw not the parking lot or the curb or ticket counter. Good thing security wasn't a big deal back then. Most smaller places we just walked behind the ticket counter through ops and went to the gate or to the plane.

Yes we old timers chuckle a bit at younger pilots complaining about SC reserve with smart phones where you can just look at your schedule and availablity lists and having commuter clauses.

Name User

I used a beeper at my airline in 2010-2012. It was a requirement per the contract for the company to supply them to reserves. Schedulers didn't know how to use them so they'd attempt to leave voice mails on them vs punching in the callback number.

FangsF15

1995 I was on AD in the AF, and had a beeper issued to me. There were 2-way "beepers" which allowed for a rudimentary text message, but they wern't very common. I think that was about the peak of the beeper.

I also bought my first cell phone that year, and it was updated version of a common phone by Motorola. Piper, I think? It had a flip cover over the keypad that only funneled your voice. It had a one line screen that only displayed the number dialed, and you had to pull out the antenna when you answered, or you'd have no reception. The battery was removable, and you could use a slim one, or a thicker one which matched the contour angle of the phone. i think my (expensive) plan had 30 mintues a month, and text was not realy a thing yet. By the late 90's, phones had advanced rapidly to smaller "antennaless" models which could actually fit in your pocket. Pretty much everyone in my squadrons had a cell phone in the late 90's, but I don't think every living being had a cell phone until at least the late 2000's?



Palm Pilots were still a thing in the late 90's. Anyone actually ever try to use one with that "palm pilot alpabet"??

Margaritaville

And then the Blackberry (Crackberry) came out. That was some hot stuff c.2008 until iPhone killed it off!

DeadStick

I’ve heard that at DAL, green slips, white slips, yellow slips, etc, were referred to that because that was the color of paper you or scheduling would fill out. At the end of a trip you might stop by the scheduling desk and fill out a literal green slip, to be called for premium flying on your days off.

EMBFlyer

Did they still issue you a piece of carbon paper that you had to carry around to fill out flight plans back then?

I remember the old school USAir guys telling me about that.