Well There‘s Your Problem - Bonus Episode 31 PREVIEW: Japan Airlines Poop Plane

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

it was the plane that was poop. the poop plane. full episode on our patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/poop-plane-plane-82510002

Yeah, what's so what's the subject that's gotten us most sidetracked yeah over the years of doing this podcast You know what it is next slide, please. It's sandwiches. Yeah Whenever this was fucking a cheese steak or something shows up. We gotta talk about sandwiches So we got to talk about a whole other wall. We've done World War two now We got to get into a much bloodier conflict the 1958 sandwich war I Love this fucking story. I put this in barely relevant, but I put it in cuz I really enjoy it. So okay night 1958 the jet age is happening and jet tickets are getting too expensive, you know package holidays haven't been invented yet

And you know, it's it's too expensive for people to fly in first business class kind hasn't really been invented yet And so the airlines have to invent economy class, which is initially called austerity class, which I think is more honest I like that. Yeah, I actually prefer that don't lie to me. You know what I mean? We're all in the economy, but like only some of us are in austerity But as we've mentioned before on like air related ones Airlines are incredibly weirdly tightly Regulated until about the 70s when the airline industry is allowed to deregulate itself

And I asked the International Air Traffic Association Orders that in economy class you can only serve coffee tea mineral water and sandwiches and then Europe sort of fights back Swiss air in this fantastic case of malicious compliance Serves a full meal entirely in sandwich form. God bless him. Yep

12 small like finger appetizer sandwiches a Main course sandwich and two dessert sandwiches I've never said this sentence before. God bless the Swiss. Yep SAS Scandinavian air systems they do these are open-faced sandwiches being very Scandinavian but they like sort of upsell them they put stuff like ox tongue and asparagus on them and This pisses off TWA and Pan Am So much that they appeal to Ayata and like have them issue a ruling on this And I get two great quotes from this first of all I have a spokesman from Swiss air who said

Every man is entitled to his concept of a sandwich and we have ours The company will defend it's sandwiches to the end Yeah, right just like a guy oh You you you need to defend yourself against Ayata welcome to the Glock sandwich We take we take two pieces right of artisan bread and then what we do is we put a Glock between them Unfortunately for civilization though the Americans fucking win and Oh I know the ruling is and this is verbatim a sandwich must be cold simple

unadorned and inexpensive and must consist of a substantial and visible chunk of bread suck Suck me off suck me off. That's fucking any materials normally regarded as expensive or luxurious such as smoked salmon oysters Caviar That's anti-semitic. I was about to do that's anti-semitic game asparagus Foie gras as well as over generous or lavish helpings which affect the monetary value of the unit shit So according to According to American airlines that American Airlines the airline, but American Airlines as airlines which are American both

Pastrami sandwiches and locks are not a sandwich. Yeah, I bet they're not your fucking watch Oh, it's not convenient. Hey you boy Hey, we will place here. We will paste your train with a plane now You can fly to the camps and not get a good sandwich Oh, it's really twist the knife. They find Scandinavian air services $20,000 for calling American sandwiches rubbery indigestibles in an hour. Yeah, but that's accurate It doesn't matter truth is, you know, the first casualty of like For saying the truth

Yeah, yeah, that's a line course and nail them up Why don't you get dickheads and it stays this way for the next 10 years until they do regulate in the 70s Which is my next slide? Where the airline industry just decides to get weird with it? Because you can do whatever you want. You can set your own roots. You can compete with each other You got the 747 you got less impressively But this is legitimately when this was invented the little rolling cart to deliver meal trays is a 70s invention and so

Airlines start like jazzing up their menus working with chefs trying to study why food tastes like nothing when you eat it on a plane And like what to do about that and the answers to those respectively are you are stressed There's noise and there's thinner staler and drier air because you're breathing everybody's old farts and shit And the way you combat it is by putting in more spice more salt and more sugar But it gets like too much like this is table-side carving I I want to say this is like Lufthansa Cathay Pacific did a flaming baked Alaska, which I bet the pilots loved getting the smoke alarm things for everyone was smoking I was fine. Don't worry about that. Oh shit. You're right. Yeah, you just light up a cigarette. It's fine Yeah, even made a dent. Yeah

But one country that existed during the 1970s next slide, please Was Japan seen here in the 1970s So what's what's Japan up to in the 70s you may ask? Well, the golden 60s are over and the economy is fucked because the economy is happening You know the oil crisis and everything And so Japanese businesses in this position where it has to do something and the things that they do out of panic end up laying a Lot of the groundwork for the economic boom of the 80s like investing in miniaturization and like quartz wristwatches and shit But if we're playing sort of a big game of civilization here America has already won a cultural victory, right?

And we're all you know wearing blue jeans You can't say rock or roll victory if it's that big though It's true, but one thing that remained extremely successful in Japan was next slide, please The Coca-Cola company. Oh We love right-wing death squads Yeah, what happens when you pay for every single sign on every single business everywhere? I like death squads And the right-wing death squads and the right-wing death squads obviously yeah

Yeah, so so coke had established the Japanese affiliate in 1957 in 1962 They made a very wise business decision which was to get into the vending machine business Japan at the time then and to an extent now loved vending machines and this made them a shitload of money They were bulletproof all the way through the 70s very very successful and so You know, it's a booming industry the company is doing very very well and The they decide what we're gonna do. We're gonna do a competition to reward our guys and so our salesman the executives decide can enter into this competition, they're gonna win European vacations

They're gonna go to Paris. They can bring their families. They can bring their wives And you know, it's it's gonna be a great time. It's gonna encourage people to like sell more and A lot of people enter some of them win next slide, please On January 3rd 1975 So Tokyo to anchorage to Copenhagen to Paris. Yeah, might as well just kill me man. I do that It has to do refueling stops, you know that I haven't and worked out how to make engines efficient yet So in order to get even that it's also it's also they didn't have e-tops back then or whatever it's called You know your extended range thing where you can fly way out of the way of the airports, you know

It also has to dodge Soviet airspace. Yes Hold on Are you googling what e-tops stands for because it's the engine's turn or passengers swim I was just making sure I wasn't confusing it with the British rail Train classification system Very similarly named Alice yes, so yes I was waiting for you to like skip back to the beautiful JAL 747

It's nice. It's nice again. I'm not flying from Tokyo to anchorage to Copenhagen to Paris I'd rather fucking kill myself, but I like I like the the crane on the tail. I like the sort of like tequila sunset Like yeah, I like this. I like this livery. It's a good looking plane. Yeah, we don't have livery anymore That's good on any air. No, I don't mind south south west by and large, but I like I have a little rant here Go for it. Which is when they did whenever they do any anything Railroads airlines Whenever anyone does like a throwback logo sports teams whenever they're like, oh, this is our old shit Check out our old livery our old branding. I'm like if it's good enough that you want to remind me of it

Why didn't you keep it? Yeah, I don't just go back. Just keep it. Just keep the old shit. Just keep doing it You know, we've been through like 50,000 Pepsi logos You got it right the first time or second time whatever just feel so every single image inside of Penn station Just leave it alone leave well enough alone it doesn't need more The design is a solve problem, right? It doesn't if you want to design a new logo Have a new company. Don't fucking rebrand the old one. Nothing should change. That's my most right-wing point of view Keep old logos forever Also, the other thing I like about the 747 like the bare mess or sort of like unhoused engines

Just like hanging off that wing. Oh, yeah, has no sort of like end on it. I really enjoy that But so This is flying Tokyo to Paris refueling an anchorage in Copenhagen First leg anchorage Tokyo to anchorage that goes fine Second leg anchorage to Copenhagen next slide, please And this is an actual a foe server 70s JAL interior which I found and it's it's 90 minutes out from Copenhagen And it's breakfast time next slide, please So breakfast is a ham omelette

This is not the actual omelette. This omelette is a blameless omelette from a different airline used for illustrative purposes only I'm not even saying which airline this omelette has been anonymized to protect the innocent But this it gives you a sense that's what a home that looks like yeah, if you don't know This looks like a nice first-class style omelette, you know Yeah, I mean Softers potatoes Something that looks vaguely let this is like an AI blended a bagel and a croissant here It's a crow bagel yeah

You got miscellaneous juice. I hope it's apple. Yeah, this is some fruit that I would eat begrudgingly Yeah, cuz you feel shamed by handing a full thing back Yeah Just hang a side on to me that says fatty I get it Next slide please It's a podcast about engineered Disasters and also internal struggles with our weight with our weight. Oh, we're struggling with struggling boys So we're pausing with like first fork full of ham omelette halfway to our mouth to ask where does airline food come from?

Um Well, I assume the trash factory. It's from the catering the trash factory Yes from the catering truck The kid I used to love of the low like accessory vehicles to a plane, you know, they all had their own thing going on They had a clear sense of purpose and I was like one day. I'll have one of those. I was wrong, but it doesn't matter Yeah, I like everything about air travel except the air travel part of it This is this is the inside of the back of one of those catering trucks. Um, I