Stuck in a bad (and mysterious) flight delay, why not blog about my first flight?
It was a Delta flight to Atlanta, circa 1970. I was eleven. I wore a hand-me-down dress from my sister of blue and orange stripes, sleeveless, with a matching scarf. I don’t remember if there was security then. For a kid used to car trips to Atlanta, where we visited relatives at least once a year, it’s sheer heaven.
I’ve just finished proofing my next book and there are three chapters that center on air travel. I worried that I was becoming like a stand-up comedian who was cut off from “normal” life and thus reduced to talking about something that’s a staple of my life. But one of the characters is a flight attendant, so that’s earned. And the other chapter centers on a middle-aged man who’s recalling his first flight, at age 20, and wondering at the fact that his own son has been on at least twenty flights and he’s only a junior in high school.
Memories of first flight, in the comments? Or just great travel stories? The fact is, I’ve been a remarkably lucky traveler for much of my life. Never slept in an airport, for example. Recently, my family had cause to remember a travel delay that forced us to spend the night in Minneapolis before going on to Honolulu, but the fact is — we really do have fond memories of the dinner we ate at Chili’s, with vouchers.
Oh, I’ve also been stuck in Guatemala City for a night. Stranded one night near LaGuardia when there was a problem with a ticket purchased for me by a third party. (I read Scruples and ate Peanut M&M’s for dinner.)
Then again, maybe one weathers travel delays more philosophically when that person remembers taking a 20-hour bus ride to her first job interview. Hey, I got the job.
My first plane ride ever was in a converted troop transport plane flying student nurses in for an army recruitment visit one state away. Nobody from my class joined. But after a few hours in that noisy, cavernous military plane with jump seats along the sides of the ‘cabin,’ I enjoyed my second flight on a commercial carrier no end. Padded seats, in-flight meal, room to sit comfortably, and so quiet you could almost hear your neighbor, I thought I was flying in luxury. That was in the days before First Class was upgraded to beyond comfortable and steerage was redesigned for short, thin people with no shoulders, like now.
Favorite part of the delay so far — we had to get our bags back, which we had checked curbside. Ticket counter attendant radio’ed for them, then, a few minutes later, I saw my bag on a conveyor belt behind her. “Hey,” I said, “that’s my bag.” “Well what’s it doing just coming around now?” she asked me rather sourly. I know she’s having a worse day than I am in many ways, but it’s really not my fault that my bag had been in the area all along.
I was about 14 and I flew from Madison, WI to Jackson, Mi with a stop in Milwaukee. I was such a small town girl I was scared to death. The airline lost my suitcase which wasn’t bad since I was going home and I managed to turn the episode into a humorous essay for my English class. The worst flight I ever took was from New Zealand to LA when I was sicker than sick and we had a layover in Roratonga. Fortunately we were flying in Business Class so I had a little bit of extra room. It took me months to get over the “Kiwi Krud.” In fact, I was still recovering the first time I met you, Laura.
I grew up in small planes, because my dad was an amateur pilot. He was also blind in one eye…the first single-eyed person(according to family lore) in Missouri to be a licensed pilot. We used to go up on the 4th of July, to see the fireworks displays from the sky. (It was surprisingly un-remarkable.) The first time I was on a commercial jet, I was terrified, ’cause that was NOT my dad at the controls. To this day, I’m still apprehensive every single time I fly. Alcohol helps.
In 1985 I traveled too much
When I was in London a ship was hijacked and an Air India jet blown up. I was in the first Air India jet to travel since the bombing. We sat for an hour then was taken to an isolated area of Heathrow where we weren’t allowed to make calls or use the bathroom without being escorted. That lasted about 13 hours.
Several months later I traveled with my parents from Strausberg to Rome. A ship was hijacked and a passenger, Leon Klinghoffer killed. Meanwhile my fathr only wanted to stay in a certain room in a certain hotel in Rome. It faced Parliament where the government was being changed for the 40something time since the end of WWTwo and there were protesters. Yes. My. CPA. Father. Was. Taken. For A. Terrorist, for several hours. When we flew home the pilot announced we would be waiting several hours for three people. He didnt’ say two living people and Leon Klinghoffer’s body. When we got to NY we didn’t go through regular customs as Mayor Koch was holding a ceremony for the family.
Several years later I had a choice of two Long Island Railroad trains–one began letting off passengers at Hicksville; the other ended there. The first mentioned left 3 minutes later. It’s the nearest station to my parents town and fortunately there was no contest–I knew the train that began letting off at Hicksville wouldn’t be crowded.
I m didn’t take the train that Colin Ferguson who killed about 8 people decided to spread mayhem on.
My travel life has fortunately been much less exciting in the past 20 years. Though I’ve had to wait forever for some planes
I remember my second air flight in 1972 to England. My one-year old daughter cried the entire way over (colic) and the attendants carried her up and down the aisles so we could get some rest. They gave us a portable crib and lots of toys for my son. Both flew free. Can you imagine that now? OF course, in England we were unable to eat in the dining room of the hotel (children under five not allowed) and our adjoining rooms were across the hall! Some things get better and some now.
I think my first flight was to Chapel Hill for a summer pre-orientation thing. We bought me a new suit for the trip. Apparently, I was supposed to wear it on the plane. But I took it in its new clothes bag to campus and wore it to the orientation, where every other incoming freshman was decked out in shorts and t-shirts while I sweltered in suit, vest, long-sleeved shirt and tie.
I met two other freshmen-to-be on the flight, one a girl named Dottie who said she really wanted to be called by her middle name, Corinne. I saw her again on campus a couple years later and addressed her as Corinne, and she just looked at me like I was some kind of weirdo (not that I was still wearing the suit).
I also seem to recall another fist-flight story – we were vacationing in Jacksonville, where my father was doing his active duty stint, and my Aunt Tish was back home having a baby, and she flew down with the baby, which I think was Bitty. Bitty thus got her first flight in considerably younger than the rest of us.
My favorite flight was when I was 13 my parents were invited to a friend’s house in Miami from Baltimore in February. This was the fabulous fifties, and we hadn’t been there before. There was snow on the ground in Maryland and we boarded the state of the art airliner, the Douglas Constellation, with a distinctive banana shape and a separate lounge on board. We disembarked three and a half hours later in the subtropics, with a balmy breeze blowing.
I have a sister who I’ve long thought of as my “lilies of the field” sister. The Lord does seem to look after her and she makes choices that need divine aid. Back in college, she got to the airport in Rochester, planning to go to Dallas, and realized she had used her last check. She used her cash to buy a ticket to St. Louis, figuring that was in the right direction. On the way to St. Louis she befriended the man in the next seat and (thank you, Lord) by the time they landed in St. Louis he had decided to sponsor the rest of her journey. When Mom heard the story, she said, “He must have had some reason for caring for the retarded.” Mary is now in her mid sixties, and the Lord is still providing.
My strangest flight experience occurred at the end of a truly great vacation in Austria and Italy. We appeared on time for the flight and were told that our airline was on strike (someone can help me out as to which one it was – it doesn’t exist anymore and it was big in 1985) and we surely were not going to New York. It was my husband and 12 year old daughter and me sleeping on heating grates and benches until they said we could fly anywhere we liked as long as it wasn’t back to the US. Amsterdam, Rome, etc. etc. So we did that a few times for fun and eventually got a plane home with seats spread out all over the giant plane. Exhausted I drooled on a lovely man in a zillion dollar suit and he never said a word until he woke me to use the restroom. Came back and put the supplied pillow on his shoulder and let me crash again.
And here, as Paul Harvey would say, is the rest of the story: Because we were traveling with a young passenger, I felt that a three-hour delay must be avoided at all costs. We had checked our bags curbside, so we got in line to wait for some human interface, while I worked the phones. All other Southwest flights were sold out, into the next morning. By the time we got to a person, we had rebooked on an Airtran flight that would put us only 90 minutes behind schedule. (Well, 2 hour — the Airtran flight was running late.) But now we had to get our luggage back. We did, then rolled it over to Airtran. No regrets, as the Southwest flight ended up being almost four hours late, so we beat it by two hours.
Cab driver left my bag on the curb, but he went back and got it.
Pia — I _think_ I want to travel with you. What an amazing story.
My first flight was from Rotterdam to Dublin. I think I was nineteen or twenty. It was entirely uneventful; I remember that the airport was ridiculously small and you had to walk over the tarmac to the plane. Also, I left my book on the flight.
Most eventful flight was probably from Cura�ao to Amsterdam. Under normal circumstances, that is about 8-9 hours, but first the plane was stuck on the runway for two hours because of a mechanical defect. Lots of hassling ensued, but eventually we took off. We sat behind the World’s Most Entitled Couple (TM) who were mortified that the flight staff wouldn’t upgrade them to first class for free. I dropped a pillow on the guy’s head when I opened the overhead compartment and he spent the rest of the flight occasionally glaring at me (Dude, just be glad it wasn’t the bag with the souvenir bowling ball I bought).
Also, when I flew back from New York to D�sseldorf the other day, there were these two teenaged kids who kept themselves entertained by deliberately stepping on people’s toes and shouting obscenities while everyone was trying to sleep. Their parents wisely avoided confrontation by guzzling some wine and then looking on approvingly.
My first flight was in the late fifties and I flew from Asheville, NC to Los Angeles, with a change in Atlanta. There was almost no way to get out of the south then without changing in Atlanta. Those of you who have been to that airport since it became a city will have to take it on good faith that the Atlanta terminal was so small one could almost see from one end to the other.
The Delta flight put down in, I think, Dallas/Ft.Worth, where the crew changed to one from another airline to continue the journey… something about territorial regulations.
12-plus hours for the entire flight, in stockings and high heels. We dressed up to fly in those days.
Somewhere around 1972 (give or take) each recreational center at each park in Fort Wayne gave a sort of “Good Citizenship” award to one kid; and at McMillan Park, I was the recipient.
So about 20 other youths and I reported to our respective parks one morning, and were picked up in a bus and taken to the airport where we boarded Delta airlines DC-9 and flew to Detroit (about 20 minutes in the sky), toured their airport and then ate lunch; and then flew back home.
This was all very cool, UNTIL….the next day’s newspaper featured a photo of us, wherein we were all named, under the headline “Underprivileged youths take flight” – which left my mom and dad utterly mortified!
A non-sequitur: A local Borders is one day away from The Big Chill, and my wife and oldest daughter and I stopped in to pick over the bones this afternoon. Everything left is 80% off or more, and we split up and spent an hour exploring around, and snapping up goodies…but I couldn’t find any Laura Lippman books.
When we reunited and headed for the checkuot, I mentioned this – whereupon our 12 year old immediately took me by the hand and directly to where there were exactly two LL books, one of which was The Girl in the Green Raincoat – which immediately became mine (the other was Hardly Knew Her, which I already have – and which I recommended to another browser).
I got the book for under $2.00, and couldn’t have been more pleased than if I’d found a $20 bill.
Jeff,
Our family has stern rules about this: An airplane touch-down does not count, but the airport does (as long as you visit the facilities). Of course, this means that the Omaha airport will only get you Iowa. But Marjorie’s right that it was a very good question.
Our adventure ended pretty well. We were two hours later than planned. If we hadn’t switched flights, we would have been almost four hours late. Alas, the cab driver left my bag at the airport, but he went back and got it.
I still insist on thinking of myself as having good travel karma.
My first flight was as a small child, from Austin to Los Angeles, my parents were taking us to Disneyland. I wore a clip-on tie and blazer (you dressed to travel then, according to my mom) and friends saw us off at the airport, and my mother took a picture of me in my suit in front of the airplane (back then there were no boarding tubes, you went up a staircase).
When we rose above the cloud bank I turned to my mom and asked if this was Heaven, which made a man across the aisle laugh really loudly. The stewardess offered me a platter of triangle sandwiches and sternly informed me if I touched one, I had to take it, and I could only have three. I think they must have gotten confused making them because there were iffy combos like pumperknickel and peanut butter/jelly. I very carefully selected three and my mom didn’t care for the stewardess’s tone because she told her I had not been raised in a barn and I wouldn’t dream of touching a sandwich and then not taking it. It was a Continental flight and we stopped in Tuscon to refuel and pick up passengers and I asked my dad if I could then say I had been in Arizona, even if I never got off the plane and touched the ground.
Jeff, I am sorry that the man laughed at your question. It was a perfectly good question.
I don’t remember either my first flight (my father is a private pilot), or my first commercial flight (except that it was to visit my grandmother).
My first overseas trip had a few notable events. First, I was 12 and it was to Iran. Secondly, on the first leg, from Baltimore to Boston, the right inboard engine backfired on landing, then caught fire. The fire warped the flap on that wing (in spite of being put out immediately), and they had to get us a new plane for the leg to London. 747s, however, are scarce, and we had to wait four hours (until 1AM — 300 people).
When we arrived in London the next day, we found out that Iran Air had canceled our flight from London to Tehran. My father spent the next several hours getting an alternate arrangement set up. He can still (39 years later) tell you the name of the Pan Am (there’s yet another name from the past!) reservation agent who did the heavy lifting there.
The next day we took off for Iran, with stops in Frankfort, Istanbul, Beirut, and Tehran (Athens may have been in there too). When we landed in Istanbul, it was daytime, and hot, and the flight crew indicated that the plane would be on the ground for an hour or so, and anyone who wanted could get off. We did not. A very good call as it turned out. 7 of us (five in my family plus two more) stayed, where we got multiple tours of the 747 cockpit (heaven for a 12-year old boy) from the captain, co-pilot, and flight engineer (yet another victim of progress), including the inertial guidance system (amazing then; now everyone has GPS). Plus a full flight crew who kept us in snacks and beverages in a plane with good air conditioning.
It turned out that they needed to replace a cracked pump in one of the engines (#2?), and wound up staying on the ground for four hours. Once that was fixed, the other passengers returned to the plane and we headed towards Beirut. The other passengers were not happy — the airport had not been air conditioned (and it was >> 100F outside), nor were there even adequate seats, nor could they leave the terminal. *Very grumpy*.
Eventually we got to Tehran, and then eventually on to Shiraz, where we stayed for three months. Where lots of things happened, but those are other stories.
My *next* flight will, with any luck, be tomorrow morning — to utilize a sudden spate of predicted good weather after a wet, cold spring that has made for lousy flying. My local soaring club, normally a weekends-only operation, has decided to operate every day this week while the sun shines. Whoo hoo! I’d do loops and barrel rolls, but the club insurance doesn’t allow it.
I�m coming to the party a little late, but after seeing this topic I can�t resist reminiscing about my favorite travel adventure. When I was 21 I had barely been out of Texas but that summer, with a fearlessness made possible only by my complete lack of experience, I packed up a borrowed backpack and headed off to meet a friend to trek across Europe. A man from our church happened to be on the same flight over and my German Godmother met me at the Frankfurt airport, but when she sent me off on the train to Paris the next afternoon for the first time in my life I was completely on my own. Totally unfettered. I spent the afternoon on the train trying to communicate with a German girl about my age whose English was as spotty as my German. When I got home we wrote each other long letters that my German prof helped me write and decode. Back in France I ran into my first challenge in the Paris terminal. I was stuck there for about 10 minutes because I thought Sortie was a place, and I didn�t want to go there. Oh how helpful Google would have been back then! Finally I caught on and made it to my train and met my friend in Cherbourg. He had started his trip 3 weeks earlier. What an adventure it was! We rode a city bus through Paris because it was a cheap way to see the city. From Paris we went to Amsterdam where we toured the Heineken brewery, visited the Van Gogh museum and learned a few things in the red light district. We went to Copenhagen and watched the fireworks in Tivoli and visited Hans Christian Anderson�s little mermaid. We were in Norway for my friend�s birthday and the longest day of the year when it never got dark. We climbed a mountain there and had a picnic by a fiord. We went back to Germany and spent time with my Godmother, touring Kranichstein Schloss and Heidelberg Castle. We had lunch at a bier garten in Austria and also went to Dachau to pay our respects. We took a cruise down the Rhine and sat out in a rain shower that kept following us, resulting in terrible colds and one of the most miserable nights of my life; sitting on jump seats in the aisle of a crowded Italian train that was hours late and kept stopping in the middle of nowhere for no reason we could ever discern. We finally made it Brindisi where we spent a day wandering through the town before catching a ferry to Greece. We went to a tiny village of 200 people where we rented a room from a fisherman who spoke just enough English to tell us where the two restaurants were and to invite us to a little festival in the next village, complete with a handkerchief dance. After Greece it was time for me to go home, but what an adventure! We had gone to street festivals in three countries, stayed in hostels and slept on trains and swam in the Mediterranean. I tried foods I had never heard of (Oozo is best in small quantities) and met people who didn�t need a common language to let us know they were friends. 50 year old me would like to go back and give 21 year old me a big hug and tell her thank you for being so brave and giving me the experience of a lifetime.