IF OPERATING SYSTEMS WERE AIRLINES

Air DOS

Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the
plane coast until it hits the ground again. Then they push again, jump on
again, and so on ...

Mac Airways

All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act
exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently
but firmly told that you don't need to know, don't want to know and
everything will be done for you without your ever having to know so would
you please return to your seat and marvel at the image quality of the
in-flight movie.

Windows 95 Airline

The airport terminal is nice and colorful, with friendly stewards and
stewardesses, and easy access to the plane. After the plane arrives (6
months late), you have a completely uneventful takeoff... then, after being
in the air for 10 minutes the plane without any warning whatsoever explodes.

Windows NT Air 

All the passengers carry their seats out onto the tarmac, placing the chairs
in the outline of a plane. They all sit down, flap their arms and make jet
swooshing sounds as if they are really flying.

Windows NT Air (at a later date)

Just like Windows Air. Costs more and uses much bigger 'new' planes.
The explosion takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius.

UNIX Airways 

Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport.
They all go out on the runway and try to put the plane together piece by
piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to be
building and how to put it together. Eventually, they build several
different aircraft, but give them all the same name. Some passengers
actually reach their destinations. All passengers believe they got there.

Linux Air 

Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own
airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways
themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the
ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you
board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of
the Seat-HOWTO. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable,
the plan leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight
meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the
great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"

OS/2 Airline 

To board the plane, you have your ticket stamped ten different times by
standing in ten different lines. Then you fill out a form showing where 
you want to sit and whether the plane should look and feel like an ocean 
liner, a passenger train or a bus. If you succeed in getting on the 
plane and the plane succeeds in taking off the ground, you have a 
wonderful trip...except for the time when the rudder and flaps get 
frozen in position, in which case you will just have time to say your 
prayers and get in crash position.

Windows XP Airline 

The airplane is very pretty, and each passenger gets to choose their own
colour and pattern for the paintwork, and their own favourite engine noise. 
Unfortunately the plane is so heavy and so slow that it is unable to get
airbourne and crashes at the end of the runway.  When parked in the hanger,
unresolved security bugs in the planes doors AND windows AND luggage-bay AND
engines AND wings AND body panels allow theives to break in and steal all
the seats and sabotage the plane.

Windows Vista Airlines:

You enter a good looking terminal with the largest planes you have ever seen. 
Every 10 feet a security officer appears and asks you if you are "sure" 
you want to continue walking to your plane and if you would like to cancel. 
Not sure what cancel would do, you continue walking and ask the agent at the 
desk why the planes are so big. After the security officer making sure you 
want to ask the question and you want to hear the answer, the agent replies
that they are bigger because it makes customers feel better, but the planes 
are designed to fly twice as slow. Adding the size helped achieve the slow 
fly goal.

Once on the plane, every passenger has to be asked individually by the flight 
attendants if they are sure they want to take this flight. Then it is company 
policy that the captain asks the passengers collectively the same thing. After 
answering yes to so many questions, you are punched in the face by some stranger 
who when he asked "Are you sure you want me to punch you in the face? 
Cancel or Allow?" you instinctively say "Allow". 
After takeoff, the pilots realize that the landing gear driver wasn't updated 
to work with the new plane. Therefore it is always stuck in the down position. 
This forces the plane to fly even slower, but the pilots are used to it and 
continue to fly the planes, hoping that soon the landing gear manufacturer will 
give out a landing gear driver update.

You arrive at your destination wishing you had used your reward miles with XP 
airlines rather than trying out this new carrier. A close friend, after hearing 
your story, mentions that Linux Air is a much better alternative and helps.

BEOS Airline 

There is no airplane. The passengers gather and shout for an airplane, then
wait and wait and wait and wait. A bunch of people come, each carrying one
piece of the plane with them. These people all go out on the runway and put
the plane together piece by piece, arguing constantly about what kind of
plane they're building. The plane finally takes off, leaving the passengers
on the ground waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. After the plane
lands, the pilot announces the passengers at the departing airport to inform
them that they have arrived.

Newton Airline 

After buying your ticket 18 months in advance, you finally get to board the
plane. Upon boarding the plane you are asked your name. After 46 times, the
crew member recognizes your name and then you are allowed to take your seat.
As you are getting ready to take your seat, the steward announces that you
have to repeat the boarding process because they are out of room and need to
recount to make sure they can take more passengers.

VMS Airline 

The passengers all gather in the hanger, watching hundreds of technicians
check the flight systems on this immense, luxury aircraft. This plane has at
least 10 engines and seats over 1,000 passengers. All the passengers
scramble aboard, as do the necessary complement of 200 technicians. The
pilot takes his place up in the glass cockpit. He guns the engines, only to
realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors.

Windows XP Air 

You turn up at the airport,which is under contract to only allow XP Air
planes. All the aircraft are identical, brightly coloured and three times as
big as they need to be. The signs are huge and all point the same way.
Whichever way you go, someone pops up dressed in a cloak and pointed hat
insisting you follow him. Your luggage and clothes are taken off you and
replaced with an XP Air suit and suitcase identical to everyone around you
as this is included in the exorbitant ticket cost, claims are made that if
you bring your own brand on board the plane might become unstable. The
aircraft will not take off until you have signed a contract. The inflight
entertainment promised turns out to be the same Mickey Mouse cartoon
repeated over and over again. You have to phone your travel agent before you
can have a meal or drink. You are searched regularly throughout the flight.
If you go to the toilet twice or more you get charged for a new ticket. No
matter what destination you booked you will always end up crash landing at
Whistler in Canada.

OS/2 SKYWAYS 

The terminal is almost empty, with only a few prospective passengers milling
about. The announcer says that their flight has just departed, wishes them a
good flight, though there are no planes on the runway.  Airline personnel
walk around, apologizing profusely to customers in hushed voices, pointing
from time to time to the sleek, powerful jets outside the terminal on the
field. They tell each passenger how good the real flight will be on these
new jets and how much safer it will be than Windows Airlines, but that they
will have to wait a little longer for the technicians to finish the flight
systems. Maybe until mid 1995. Maybe longer.
     
WINGS OF OS/400 

The airline has bought ancient DC3s, arguably the best and safest planes
that ever flew, and painted "747" on their tails to make them look as if
they are fast. The flight attendants, of course, attend to your every need,
though the drinks cost $15 for an orange juice.  Stupid questions cost $230
per hour, unless you have Supportline, which requires a first class ticket
and membership in the frequent flyer club. They cost $500, but your 
accounting department can call it overhead.

NETWARE AIR 

Very large and moderately expensive to operate.  Often require their own
airport.  "Unique" design gives the planes 3 wings which the engineers
insist makes them fly better than standard 2 winged planes.  According to
their technicians, nothing ever goes wrong with the planes.  If the planes
are late on arrival, pilots often claim they were "cut-off" by rival DOS or
Windows Airliners.  Tickets must be purchased in packs of 5, 10, 25, 50,
100, 250 or 1000.
     
Red Hat Airlines 

The standard in linux air travel. They usually dis- and reassemble their
planes a few times to make adjustments to the parts. Most people have flown
Red Hat Air at one point or other. Some people like it and some people hate
it and move on to one of the other airlines. Passengers are all treated the
same; they get stuck in their seats and told not to ask questions --
everything will be taken care of for them. They should just sit back, relax,
and not touch the fancy controls under any circumstances, lest they send the
plane into a tailspin.  Red Hat Airlines is fabulously rich.

Mandrake Airlines 

Mandrake bought a truckload of planes from Red Hat, put new engines in them,
re-painted them, and now run their own airline. Considered by many to be the
most friendly airline for first-time flyers.

Corel Airlines 

A new player on the scene, Corel Air thinks it can be the airline of choice
for a new generation of first-time pleasure flyers, and maybe even lure in
some business travelers too. Tickets are costly, more so in the business
class. Their planes are big, brightly painted, and like Red Hat's they
protect the innocent, clueless passengers from the dangerous buttons,
switches and blinkenlights of the cockpit.

SuSe Airlines 

An airline out of Europe that tries to be everything for everyone and
succeeds -- to a degree. Recently paid a huge sum of money to use a comic
strip in its promotional material. (And after they finally named the
lizard...)

Caldera OpenAirlines

These guys go out of their way to make things comfortable for the business
user. They've got a pretty terminal, pretty planes, really good in-flight
movies, etc. But I had a bad experience with these guys once. They lost my
luggage. Quite a mess, really. Ah well, such is life. I never flew with them
again.

SlackAIR 

From a distance, their planes look just like everyone elses. But up close
you can tell that they haven't been painted and little bits of wire stick
out here and there. But onboard, the seats are comfortable enough and there
are plenty of stewardesses available to help you readjust your seat if you
manage to break it. There is no in-flight movie but if you get bored you are
always welcome up in the cockpit. The pilots will be glad to let you try and
fly the plane and are happy to let you push whatever buttons you want, even
if you don't know what you're doing.  Generally, novice flyers avoid
SlackAIR as they've heard horror stories about newbies pressing the wrong
button and causing the plane to explode.

Debian Airlines 

They have a single type of airplane; a huge sucker weighing 2400 tons and
carrying just about everything you can imagine. They've got kitchen sinks,
massage parlors, a paintball arena, and 294 types of cheese for sale in the
onboard, 24-hour supermarket. You can see from the terminal they have a huge
team of technicians working on their fleet, poking and prodding. Debian Air
is the only choice for some: everything onboard is built 100% by union
workers -- no shoddy, possibly dangerous, imports here. The plane, of
course, contains a lot of unnecessary things. The odd thing is that not all
of the pieces of the plane are taken on every flight. The pieces all fit
together wonderfully, and at the beginning of the flight the passengers are
all asked exactly what they need on the airplane. Anything the passengers
don't particularly care for is just left behind. Sometimes it turns out in
the middle of the flight that someone would like a piece of the plane that
was left behind, and the plane is amazingly able to summon that piece of the
plane from where it was left behind, or from whichever one of Debian
Airlines' storehouses scattered all over the world is nearest. The piece
then enters the plane and merges in and fits together with all the other
parts as if it had been there from the beginning, while the plane is flying
at 40,000 feet and 700 miles an hour. This is really cool to watch, and hard
to believe it actually works. So because it's so easy and effortless to add
and remove parts while the plane is in motion, even though the plane is huge
to begin with, once the flight is underway it winds up being a lot smaller,
nimble, and seamless than your average Red Hat Airlines plane was to begin
with, because with Red Hat Airlines the passengers aren't sure which parts
are needed (or even installed, for that matter), and because there the parts
all have to be installed and removed manually, sometimes with help by the
passengers, so the useless stuff just stays in. Of course, the thing is,
almost all of the flights on Debian Airlines leave way, WAY past the time
printed on the ticket. Sometimes you're left waiting there for months,
pulling your hair out while the airline people try to calm you down and say
please wait, it won't be long, we're still performing safety checks (on
often very old and reliable parts). Interestingly enough, if all the
passengers for your particular flight get together and ask if they can just
leave early, the technicians will drop whatever tests they're doing and just
let you go in whatever state the plane is in at the moment, without
finishing the safety checks. When this happens the airline employees act all
worried and warn the passengers all over the place that what they're doing
is very unsafe, but nothing bad ever seems to happen because of it. If the
passengers are willing to wait for those safety checks to finish, they're in
for probably the safest ride they could possibly have.

For completeness, let's throw in some BSD...

NetAIR 

Pretty standard fare, with one primary selling point: they'll fly anywhere.
There isn't anywhere they won't go.  War zones, political hotbeds, Canada --
all fair game. Of course, they keep their planes in good condition and up to
date.

FreeAIR 

Probably the most popular of the alternative airlines, FreeAIR is a favorite
of business travelers and, well, pretty much everyone. They offer the same
services as everyone else and have the same devoted following as the other
airlines. Purportedly a good choice for first time BSD flyers.

OpenAIR 

SecureAIR really would be more appropriate. They've got armed guards at
every door, armed guards on the plane -- even a fighter escort. Passengers
are treated pretty respectably as long as they are willing to go through the
security checkpoints.