Thank you very much to my longtime friend Jon Proctor for letting me display his great photo of Eastern's B747-121 N735PA in full Eastern livery and DC-9 N8964E on the ramp at the end of Concourse 5 (now D). Eastern Airlines leased three Boeing 747-121 aircraft from Pan Am for the winter season when Pan Am traffic was much lighter. Eastern painted a third B747 (N735PA) (pictured) in full Eastern livery. N737PA operated both in the interim scheme and again in full Eastern scheme. In this photo N735PA is parked on the end gate of old Concourse 5 (now rebuilt at least twice and known as Concourse D). Jon's photo of N731PA and N737PA in the partial interim Eastern scheme is the next photo and the link to it is: http://www.pbase.com/donboyd/image/165178746 .

Miami International Airport was caught behind the times with the introduction of the Boeing 747, McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 and later the Lockheed L1011 widebody aircraft. Passenger gates were too small to handle the larger number of people departing on one widebody flight, especially when it came to full Boeing 747's. MIA's only international concourse, Concourse 4 (now "E"), only had one widebody gate (gate 54, later E-9) until late 1977 when the E-Satellite Terminal opened with numerous widebody gates. But MIA Gate Controllers could only assign flights to the satellite for a limited number of hours per day because Terminal Operations couldn't or wouldn't staff the facility at night or early morning hours. As a consequence we had to put widebody, and narrowbody, aircraft on remote pads and bus the passengers and crew to Immigrations and Customs at the base of Concourse E when the E-Satellite was closed.

Regarding information on Eastern's B747 service, this Eastern Airlines caption on the back another photo (the link to it is: http://www.pbase.com/donboyd/image/165182055 ) describes it as:

"Eastern's 352-seat Boeing 747s went into service December 21, 1970, between New York and Miami and New York and San Juan. On January 21, 1971, the aircraft was placed into regularly scheduled service between Chicago and Miami. Features of Eastern's 747s are an eight-seat lounge at the aft end of the main cabin for coach passengers, as well as an upper deck lounge for first-class passengers. A chief purser is assigned each 747 flight to supervise all aspects of cabin service. Eastern varies its cabin staff of 11 to 15 flight attendants based on the number of passengers holding reservations for a given flight."

Please click on "original" below to view the image at the largest size.