I remember seeing Braniff's planes at our local airport--they were the ones which were painted in different colors, and their slogans such as "The End of the Plain Plane" and "Braniff Gets You There With Flying Colors" emphasized them. But my memories of Braniff are bitter: by the time my family made plans to fly to New Orleans on Braniff, my mother was ill with leukemia. Shortly, thereafter, Braniff would find itself in financial trouble from which it would not recover. I took a flight from my hometown (Des Moines) to Kansas City International in March of 1982, shortly after my mother had passed away. Braniff ceased operations just two months later. Even on my trip to Kansas City, I could see that the aircraft were shoddy, but it never occured to me that the great airline was going to fold. (The later reincarnations of Braniff never served the Des Moines area.)

By the way, there is a book about the demise of Braniff written by John Nance.

--Anonymous