The Wright Brothers’ first flight lasted twelve seconds, a fact I learned at the National Air & Space Museum. It sticks with me, when so other facts fail to, because it strikes me as about the same length of time that one can maintain excitement/wonder at flight.
Actually, I was probably excited for most of my first flight, on an Eastern jet from Baltimore to Atlanta, when I was 10 or 11. This was an annual trip, sometimes twice-yearly, and we usually drove, which took 11.5 hours. So I was pretty darn excited to do it in under two hours.
People dressed for flying then. Well, we did. I wore a hand-me-down dress of my sister’s, a blue/orange-striped shift with matching scarf. I thought I was elegant, although given the fact that I was porkier than my sister, I probably looked like twenty pounds of sausage stuffed in a 10-pound blue/orange-striped casing. I think metal detectors had been installed by then, but security was pretty low-key. Do you realize that there’s a whole generation growing up that will never know what it’s like to come off a plane and see a friendly, waiting face? It’s just not the same, that scrum outside security.
Another thing about flying: I was raised to believe that it was almost criminal to order food and drink in the airport. The prices! The waste! I was 30, en route to the Kentucky Derby with good friends, when someone suggested we have a beer in the airport bar. “Really? That’s allowed?”
What was your first flight? Was it special, exciting? Do you remember what you wore and where you went? Is anyone ever blase about that first take-off?
I was 18, a freshman in college and it was 1969. The flight was from Atlanta to Jacksonville. There were two airlines that flew between those cities, Delta and Eastern. The stewardesses (that is what they were called then) were thin and pretty. Back then everyone knew you had to look good (physical beauty and look good in the uniform) to be one. Unlike today when the person servicing your flight can scare the hell out of you. OK that sounds unfair, but I was on a flight recently where the “flight attendant” was overweight with run down shoes, dirty hair and her uniform was bunched at the waist. I wondered what had happened? Did appearance go the way of the no longer existing airlines? Maybe I could get a job with the airlines now….
Anyway, back in the old days, the 60′s and 70′s, people didn’t dress up, but they did take care to look presentable. Now, it seems anything and everything goes. I also remember when you went out of your way NOT to buy anything at the airport except a magazine. You always got a meal on the plane; then it became snacks only; now you have to either bring your own food or purchase food on the plane.
My aunt, now 88, used to fly all the time back in the 60′s. We would walk with her out to the gate, separated from the plane by a chain link fence maybe 50 feet away. We would watch her walk up the stairs and wave back to us from the top of the stairs, the way the President does now on Air Force One.
I think I was 5 the first time I flew. I don’t really remember much about the actual flight, just that we left from Baltimore and flew to Orlando, it was Eastern Airlines, and my mother was pregnant with my brother. Oh, and I got my little wings pin.
The first flight I took by myself was a different story. I was 17 flying down to Atlanta to se my best friend from high school. She had moved away with her family. I was supposed to have a six o’clock flight and a girl friend of mine was taking me to the airport. Needless to say, I didn’t make that flight. I woke up about five minutes before it was taking off. My girl friend had to go to work, so she couldn’t take me anymore. My “older brother” (best friend that was living with us while he finished his last semester in college) had a friend stay over that night (ok, so I had a REALLY big crush on this guy, and apparently, he was starting to like me as well), offered to take me instead, so that I could try to catch the next flight. This was when you could still have someone walk you to the gate and see you off, so he did. I will never forget it – we sat there for a few minutes (he held my hand!) while the airline checked to see if they could get me a seat. They could, so we got up, walked over to the gate, and he kissed me goodbye!! He told me to have a safe, fun trip and that he would see me when I got home! I was so overcome with joy, I think I could have floated all the way to Atlanta on my own!
We were going to Disney World. I was seven my sister was six. We sat next to each other and my dad and brother sat a few rows away. We had our seats reclined way back and the tall man behind us asked us how tall we were. Then he told us how tall he was and could we please put our seats up a little. The pilot told us we were going to land and we expected it would be something like pulling in a driveway. We wondered why it was taking so long to land and WHY WERE WE GOING DEAF? Something must be wrong! My sister and I said our goodbyes to each other, I’m sure all the people around us could hear us, as we had to talk loud to hear, and must have gotten a kick out of that.
My first flight was to Germany, and was on Icelandic Air so we stopped in Iceland – very cool! I was 5 at the time.
I don’t think airplanes got boring for me till I worked at the airport, let me tell you that is a job that on occasion can take the joy right out of you … however most of the time I was aware that I worked in a very special place. People were either starting off on adventures, going to see someone they love. or returning to the same things. Sometimes it was really a nice place to be
PS> When I worked there, as a new hire, all I had to do as an airline employee was flash my id to get through security … forget that now. And it is a little sad that you can’t meet people at the gate anymore … that was the best part of the airport.
Am I the only one who cries like a baby at the end of Love Actually with all the airport greetings?! I get teary eyed just THINKING of it! I think they were filmed before the Towers were knocked down, but I can’t be sure. This is my absolute favorite thing about airports, despite all the security. If you witness these joyous greetings (even at the baggage claim area) and they don’t melt your heart, then you HAVE no heart!
ah, here’s a topic I love. My first flight, I was 4. we went to Disney World. My dad flew for United Airlines for 21 years, and my mom was a “stewardess” as they were called back then (so polically incorrect nowadays). She still has some of her awesome ensems from her flying days – these cute color-block shifts and little pantsuits. Those were the days where you had to be a certain weight or they sent you home! Anyway back to my flights. I also can remember being 8 years old and flying with my dad in a little 4-seater Bonanza, and he let me take the ‘wheel’ for a minute. My 6 year old brother in the backseat started bawling when I tipped the plane almost sideways! I thought that’s how you steered it.
Also, along the lines of dressing up for flights – my parents have instilled that in me, since we always had to dress up because we flew on a pass. Even though I don’t have to now, my instinct is to pull out nice dress pants and heels, even though I fly coach now with the normal people… *sigh*
I was probably 4 (though it could’ve been a year in either direction) for what I think was my first flight — either Dulles or Friendship to Miami (in pursuit of a sunny Christmas I assume… it naturally rained nearly the entire week we were there, which had no effect whatsoever on my fascination with shuffleboard courts). Dressed up? Definitely!
I flew often enough as a child that I recall taking smug pleasure at other passengers’ take-off/landing discomfort before I even hit my teens. Nothing too outwardly obnoxious, mind you — the “game” comprised simply projecting as much of a bored, isn’t-this-routine? attitude as possible while people several multiples your age visibly tense up and grip their arm rests. The reality of course being that I still enjoy the g-force of take-offs and suffer minor anxiety at landings.
I remember really disliking flying out of Dulles back in those single-digit years. The drive from Bethesda was soooooo boring. Virtually no traffic, with only cows and this one farmhouse to break the monotony. Even Friendship was better, with National the definite preference. I hadn’t been on the Dulles corridor since maybe the late ’70s until flying in for some lobbying in ’97 or ’98… it’s been nearly a decade and I’ve yet to recover from the shock of the amount of development in that interim. But boy, it sure cleared much of my homesickness right up!
My first flight was the summer after 10th grade in 1968. I had been to Ft. Worth to visit my grandmother, which was a 6-7 hour bus ride. My other grandma treated me to a flight back home. It was out of Love Field, and my memory is faulty about the airlines. I had been thinking it was Southwest, but a few years ago as they were celebrating some anniversary they claimed to be founded in the early 70s. My memory is also faulty about what I wore, because I can see myself clearly in 2 different outfits. One of them is the only dress I ever got at Neiman Marcus. It’s still hanging in my closet but hasn’t fit for over 30 years.
Love Actually! Well, I know Bryon and I both cry.
(Just kidding. I’m sure Bryon doesn’t cry, although he’s wonderfully open-minded about so-called chick flicks.)
And how it made my heart soar to see someone refer to “Friendship.” That was the glorious name of the Baltimore airport before it “upgraded” to Baltimore Washington International. Now, properly: Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
I was around ten or eleven, wearing my Sunday go to meeting clothes, a little excited about the flight but I was more concerned that I was going to have to spend the whole summer with my father.
The thing is, I used to love to fly. Now I just hate it and avoid it all costs. I also strongly believe the airport screeners are fifth column Nazis.
Maybe deregulation wasn’t such a great idea after all.
I flew from Madison, WI to Jackson, MI with a stop in Milwaukee. Jackson doesn’t even do commercial flights any more. I was probably 15. I didn’t get too dressed up, but I certainly wasn’t wearing jeans either. My luggage, unfortunately got on a different plane and didn’t get home until well after I did. My most recent flight was this past Monday from Orlando to Denver. Even after all these years and many international trips, I still hate bumpy flights! Thank goodness for Jim Beam and Xanax!
We lived near a small airport, and my father loves planes. So we used to hang out at the airport quite often. I’m not sure how old I was the first time I went up in one of the small planes. Probably 7 or 8. Didn’t take a jet flight until I was in high school.
My first helicopter ride was when I was 12. We were in Gettysburg and they had helicopter tours of the battlefield. My father, brother, and I went up for one of them. It was one of those bubble copters. When I was about 17 I got to ride in one of the open sided military helicopters. That was scary. You have a safety harness on, but I was in the seat right by the opening. Yikes but fun.
I was seven, I think, and my uncle who lived in Newport News Va. had his private pilot’s license. He was also a nuclear engineer working on the construction of a new nuclear powered aircraft carrier (The Kennedy, I think). He took me and my mom up in the plane to look over “his” boat. It was extremely cool.
Talk about security being way different…I don;t think we would have gotten that close today.
My first airline flight was when my parents took me to Europe when I was eight or nine. Delta to LaGuardia, cab ride to Kennedy, BOAC to London, Sabena to Brussels. The scariest part was the cab ride. I still remember how nice everyone was on BOAC and how pretty the stewardesses (stewardi?)were. They gave me a pair of pilot’s wings. The folks on Sabena, however gave me a little metal model of the plane we flew. I kept both of those gifts for years.
I still enjoy flying, even though the stewardi are flight attendants now, and female pulchritude is no longer a requirement. And no one’s giving me litle toy planes anymore. Still…it’s travel.
My first flight didn’t actually come until I was 22. A friend of mine lived in Philly and sold me his car, which I had to go pick up.
Back then, there were metal detectors, but people were allowed through to the gates. At Cleveland Hopkins, you emptied your pockets AFTER you went through. If I remember correctly, I showed them my keys and was waved on through.
Compare that to my most recent flight this past weekend. I now have the whole metal detector ritual down cold. I’ve learned not to threaten to beat Richard Reid to death with lead-tipped sneakers when he gets out of prison. The TSA finds this amusing, ironically, but the passengers get nervous. I’ve learned to scope out the various food places between flights. Baltimore, Islip, and Newark are great as you can’t get anywhere in the airport after clearing security. CVG would be okay if Gate C wasn’t a mile from everywhere else. Whoever designed Columbus’s metal detector arrangement had to be on crack. I needed an ATM when I left for New York Thursday morning. I was told I had two choices: Go back through security or find one at BWI. Did I mention I like BWI?
Atlanta-Hartsfield is the portal to Hell.
And Southwest Airlines is the best airline I’ve ever flown. Their idea of 45 minutes behind schedule is landing 15 minutes late. It’s worth going 2 hours out of your way to get a Southwest flight.
I too was 11 or 12, and flew from Pittsburgh to Hartford, CT to visit my oldest sister, who was 10 years older than me (and still is!). This would have been around 1968 or 1969. Sadly I don’t recall what I wore, but I do remember the thrill of feeling the plane speed up and racing down the tarmac. I felt so grown up to be on a plane by myself – and I didn’t want the flight to end! It’s a pretty quick jump from the ‘burgh to Hartford, so the thrill ended too soon.
I don’t fly very often anymore, but when I do, I don’t think I’m too blase’ about it. I still get excited when the wheels start turning so fast and that lift off feeling hits you!
Definitely looks like I may capture the ‘late bloomer’ award here… My parent’s drove us everywhere, we never flew. We took long cross-country car trips with my Dad stopping and making us read every historical marker between Chicago and LA on old Route 66! As for air travel, that very first flight is a little fuzzy, but may have been when I was in my mid-30s already, and my husband and I flew to Toronto. First overseas flight was Oct 1990. Very memorable flight to Ireland .. seriously over-packed my luggage.. but it was the most gorgeously scenic country to fly over. Give me the window seat every time!
Worst experience ever in any airport was the Christmas weekend 1991. I was returning from Lexington, KY – the day after they arrested ‘the shoe bomber’, Richard Reid. It was insane. They were making new rules up as they went… This little airport was swarming with security officers who were all visibly nervous, over-reacting, and walking about glaring at passengers with their hands on their holstered weapons. I was searched three times (probably because I became quite upset at the invasiveness of this all.. it was creepy being groped) and consider myself lucky to this day that I wasn’t hauled away and sent to Guantanamo.
Despite that bad experience, I love flight, the being up there. But I can barely tolerate what goes on at airports now and passes for ‘security’.
Proud to be the OLDEST here (so far) when I first flew: It was 1984 and I was 25.
That year was a first for me in lots of ways: first taxi ride, first city bus ride, etc. (I grew up in a tiny Midwestern town and didn’t get out much.)
I flew with my kids (1 and 3 at the time) moving from the Midwest to Colorado. Woo hoo! I loved the food, no surprise because I love hospital food too, and thought flying was so fun. Still do.
whoops, looks like Annie beat me. Way to go!!!
I was 21 when I flew for the first time — on a Piedmont Airlines flight from Spartanburg, SC (home), to Bluefield, West Virginia, to interview for a newspaper job. Despite my claustrophobia and fear of heights (yeah, I’m a mess), I loved flying. Being above the clouds was astonishing to me. I couldn’t look away from the window for a second. The landing was a bit scary, though. The Bluefield airport was on the flattened top of a mountain, and I had no trouble at all imagining the plane going in too low and hitting the mountainside instead of the runway. (A few years later, when I was working on the Charleston Gazette, also in WVA, a plane did exactly that at the mountaintop Charleston airport and many people were killed.) We landed safely in Bluefield, I took the job, and didn’t get on a plane again until I was working in Charleston and flew through a raging thunderstorm in a four-seater piloted by a college president. But that’s a different story.
Sandy
I first flew in 1984: I was 23, and I went from Philly to Chicago to reconnect with a beautiful man named Mike Latino whom I had met in South Bend, Indiana a few months before when I drove out to Notre Dame to pick up my best friend from grad school. Any nervousness I had about flying were far far superceded by the absolute joy I felt at seeing this man again. I don’t know how I remember this, but I wore a blue and white striped cotton dress on, he met me at the gate (remember that!) in a three piece suit, and I have had few experiences before or since when all was right with the world as it was at that moment when he swept me in his arms.
And who else misses being met at the gate? Subsequent to this romance, I spent three years in a long distance relationship with a man who went to law school in Atlanta. Those moments of reunion just off the plane are among my most cherished. There is a great quote from “Nicholas Nickelby” which I thought of all the time during this Hartsfield romance: “The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”
I was 33 when I first flew. I was being transported back to California from New York after I had a stroke and brain surgery. I had driven across country for oh about the 5th time with a friend and stayed with she and her girlfriend in Seagate which is in or near Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY. I sort of remember it was like being lifted up by the hand of God, (who I think I still believed in at that time) and thought it was a wonderful thing. But now I’m an old hand at flying as I have traveled all over the USA as presinedt of a non-profit. I don’t even like to go from here to Sitka anymore because the planes are so uncomfortable, nothing like they used to be. Before that first time I really liked to take the train or drive but even trains have been trimmed down to near nothing because of the greedy people who set our current economy in motion with no sign of slowing down.
I was late to flying on comercial planes. My grandfather was an aviation pioneer, who heard about the Wright brothers and had built a couple of planes within two years, with the help of French books about glider aerodynamics, teaching himself French in the process. Both my parents built war planes during WWII. After teh war, my mother worked for Howard Hughes.
I had a friend who had a plane and took me up numerous times, in the ’60s, even letting me fly the plane.
But generally transportation was by automobile. When I was a senior in college, in 1972, I was invited to give a paper to the American Nuclear Society, which was meeting in Idaho Falls. I was in Southern California at the time. (It was a different world, then.) A couple of other students decided to go and we had a friend who had a pilots licence, so we decided to use a private plane. Weather grounded the plane in Las Vegas and we had to take the bus to Idaho, which made for an unpleasant trip. On the way back, I took my first Comercial flight, One of Western’s Champaign Flights(“We move out tails for you”, certinly a different time.) It was quite the memorable occasion. It still took seven years for me to find the reasons to fly around the country on a regular basis.
It was the late fifties and I was taking my first flight, from Asheville, NC, to Los Angeles, with a plane change from Piedmont (what else) to Delta in Atlanta (where else, if you were in the south). The Atlanta airport was small enough that inside, one could see from one end to the other. Yes, this was a long time ago.
Jets were barely in use and there was an extra cost if one flew by jet instead of by propeller. The Delta plane made a stop at Love Field where the entire crew left, to be replaced by another one. Memory fails me as to whether the entire trip took 12 or 15 hours, all of this in a two-piece dress with a waistband and a bow at the neck–white pongee with large beige polka dots, and highheels. In those days, people dressed up to fly. I don’t recall what my feet must have been like at the end of the journey. The memory that has always remained is that of flying into LA at night, with the lights that seemed to go on forever, which would be nothing compared to today.
I remember my own far less vividly than my daughter’s, three years ago. She was 6. We were flying out of Indianapolis. The seat was nice and roomy for a 6-year-old, and she was sitting in it with her legs crossed Indian-style — the mind boggles at such comfort on an airplane. When we finally were No. 1 for takeoff and the plane went into its sharp acceleration for takeoff, she called out, “WHEEEE!” loud enough for most of the passengers to hear. To their credit, most of them laughed.
It was 1968, and I was 7 years old. My sister, who was 5, and I were on our way to spend the summer in Sweden with my grandmother. We were staying in the house she was born in on a small island off the coast called Oland. My sister and I wore matching yellow dresses and black patent leather shoes with fishnet stockings. We carried round, black patent leather carry on bags. My teddy bear (who is still remarkably in one piece although last seen wearing an American Girl doll poncho and having a tea party with about 20 Barbies) was stuffed into my bag. When we went through customs, the officer leaned down and asked, “What do you have in your bag?” I said, “A bear.” He smiled and said, “Well, we don’t want to let him out, do we?” And he didn’t even have me open the bag. Far cry from the security guy at an airport in Florida who wanted to pat down my then 6 year old daughter to make sure she wasn’t a terrorist. Needless to say, I raised a rukus and he didn’t do it.
No, the part that tears me up in Love Actually is at the funeral when they do the clip show to the music of the Bayside Rollers…<sniff>
First flight, I was 16 and I was flying out to Arizona to stay with my Aunt and Uncle over Christmas. Nothing creepier to a Midwest boy than a 70 degree Christmas with no snow. And as for that awe at the first takeoff, there was a period between 2001 and 2003 that I swear it seemed like I was flying every friggin week. I knew the airports inside and out and was usually asleep long before the plane took off.
I was maybe 8, maybe 10, flying from Beyootiful Bradley Field (the “Hartford-Springfield” airport inconveniently located nowhere in particular in Windsor Locks, Connecticut) flying I think to Rochester, New York with my dad. On Allegheny. Or Mohawk. Two airlines (aka “Agony and Slowhawk” that didn’t live very long.
Bradley eventually became Bradley International – allegedly originally because they had maybe ONE flight a week coming in from Canada but mostly because I think they had to deal with flights from Canda that sometimes got diverted due to bad weather – so they had to go “international” in order to justify US Customs setting up shop there to process all the furriners.
It’s still a royal pain in the ass airport to deal with – transportation to/from the place sucks rocks especially when you’re dealing with a disability. Hartford seems to have all of 2 cab companies – no lifts. Gobs of fun.
My first flight was in 1985. I was 16 and was going from Dusseldorf, Germany, to Athens, Greece, with my best friend to visit my uncle. It was only the second time I was allowed to travel without my parents. I don’t remember what I was wearing, but I remember that I had taken Agatha Christie’s At Bertram’s Hotel to read on the plane. Never opened it, though, because my friend and I were glued to the window. We also thought airline food was the coolest thing on earth. We had Chicken Cacciatore and I’m sure it was awful, but we just loved the way everything was packed to fit together.
The drive across Athens in rush hour took longer than our flight. My dad was sitting at home in front of the TV waiting for news of a plane crash.
I was the summer of 1971, so I was five. My twin sister and I flew with our dad from Washington, DC (the old National Airport) to Charleston, SC to visit our grandfather, who’d recently been widowed. The airline was National (now defunct), and we got not only wings but playing cards.
When we landed, we left the plane by a descending staircase from the back, which I obsessed about on the flight back; what if it suddenly opened mid-flight, and we all fell out?
My first plane flight was a private corporate jet thatbelonged to the construction company that I worked for. I was hitchhiking back from Dillard Oregon to Covelo Ca. after visiting my boyfriend. It was New years eve day. The owner of the company recognized me and said if you didn’t have your dog we could give you a ride as we’re dropping off paperwork. They were is Eureka checking on a coast gaurd building they were erecting and picking up crab for the New Year’s Eve bash. I said she can fly. Snd we did. The dog jumped on the seat looke out the window and as soon as her brain put two and two together. Her head was shaking in one direction and her eyes in the other. She dove between my legs and stayed there. The Covelo airport was fogged in. The pilot made his landing in a town over an hour away on a landing strip that was shaved off the top of a hill. I got a ride right to my front door.
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