Neither. They were ex-PSA birds that EAL flew on the Shuttle. High density and low power. Great setup...ugh...

They usually weren't bad since the Shuttle only carried a fuel load for a DCA-LGA, LGA-BOS trip or vice versa, and very little if any baggage. That particular night, we were doing DCA-PBI with a -15 bird and it went down with an mechanical...so they gave us a Shuttle bird. The Captain was opposed to it and told System Control it was a bad idea...but the TAC "managers" knew better.

We had weather all along the route that night and because we didn't have offshore gear, the AR's were not an option. So his directive was to keep a close line on the fuel and if we got ANY holding, we were diverting for fuel.

Sure enough, south of JAX we get holding instructions. Nothing in FL was available so off we went to the planned alternate, Nassau.

We landed and gassed up and the agent ran up with papers for us; and the Captain said, "you need to find about 142 hotel rooms right now." The agent wanted to know why and accused the Captain of being a troublemaker.

He smiled...I remember his smile to this day...and said, "no...they cancelled a LGA-PBI flight and put them on the Shuttle to DC to go on this flight. The majority of our passengers are Jewish, it's Passover and the sun sets in one hour. I will not force them to violate their religion because System Control wouldn't listen."

They guy turned grey. And EAL bought the rooms.