My first long flight was when we were taking my Mothers body back to Canada for her funeral. That was about then.
Jet to Seattle. 4 prop liner Seattle to Calgary? Calgary to Sask, some slightly modernized C47 version. My Dad said he knew how to fly that one. That was the last leg, but I was hoping for a Biplane and a Pilot with googles for the next lap. Yeah smoking in all but the last (something about gas fumes?). Nice meal in the jet.
There was some deal with the Canadian government that they paid for the body to be flown back.
Mine too. I actually wrote a letter to Alaska Airlines complaining about it. They were nice enough to respond at least. Claimed that it was a service and that many of their passengers appreciated getting the opportunity for an Alaska Air credit card and bonus miles.
While I agree with most of that at least in Europe they don’t avoid meal times for flights. That want to maximise the use of the aircraft. It could make sense for small airports with a single runway. It is more efficient to have a series of take-offs followed by a series of landings so theoretically the airport could have landings during meal times and take offs after (when everyone has eaten at the airport) but the sequences need ot be shorter than that so a delayed plane doesn’t have to wait too long (for take offs it isn’t a problem but if a plane has to circle for 2 hours before getting a landing slot at best that wastes a lot of fuel and at worst it destroys a very expensive plane!
My first flight was 1978 and I didn’t fly again for nearly 10 year but in the time I have travelled nearly everything has been monetorised. The airlines don’t want you to eat at the airport they want you to eat on the plane because unlike the 1980s (and before) that is a revenue stream for them, but dispite that efficiency is everything a plane which had 5 cabin crew in the 1980s might have 3 now. So the procedures minimise their work. My last flight departed at 10am and landed at 14:30 (no change in time zone) the airline push you to pre-order meals (more options available and slightly less exhorbitant price) and then give your hot dinner about 20 minutes into the flight. If you know lunch is served at 10:30am you probably have a late breakfast at the airport and so last until you arrive (and get through the arrivals system), if you don’t know that pre-paying for a meal onboard so you can eat at what you expect to be lunch time seems like a good idea.
I remember flying as a kid to visit family in the early seventies on Air Canada and Canadian Pacific. DC8s. Mealtime with mini size but actual stainless steel utensils and stoneware plates and bowls. I recall some very seventies upholstery and cabin finishes.
There was security, but pretty simple by todays standards. I am pretty sure we walked through metal detectors but don’t recall if carry ons went through much inspection. This was after my parents divorced and we were anything but rich.
No Hare Krishnas or any kind of harassment, but this was Canada. I remember my parents walking us to the gate when we were old enough to fly on our own and we were going for a visit as my parents were then in different provinces.
I worked commissary and cargo in the late nineties and early 2000s, and flew on employee passes. Before 911 we would drive each other right up to the plane on the ramp, use our pass to open the bridge door and not even bother with security. It was a long time ago, but I think recall even confirming our seat for boarding because some of my coworkers had clearance on the booking system. There were a lot of empty seats back then so stand by was easy.
I worked on 911. What an erie day. By the time of my shift there were american aircraft parked all over at YYC. Never saw so many aircraft and not a thing in the air.
As they say in their commercials, “The only way to fly!”
The last time I flew with them was from Portland Oregon to Minneapolis, one week before Mount Saint Helen blew its top/side. It was only smoldering then, as I watched, sipping free champagne while flying at a safe altitude.
Or on the ground, either. My father, being a traveling salesman traveled regional airlines a lot and he hated Cooper with the heat of a thousand suns as most of them simply sealed the door instead of putting some sort of fancy switch on them and he really liked using that door.
I remember going down to Sky Harbor and waiting at a short chain-link fence outside for him to deplane. My first flight was in 1962, age 12. It was a charter fligh so it was pretty well walk out, climb the steps and sit down.
I never visited the cockpit as a kid but on a MAC flight to Okinawa in 1974 I peered through the open door past the engineer and pilots to look at all that blue water. They probably figured GIs were better-screened than civilians.
I flew in an airplane for the first time in 1971, on a flight from O’Hare to . . . O’Hare.
Yes, that’s right, that was a thing back in the day–flights for people that didn’t want to go anywhere, but just wanted the thrill of being in the air and the bragging rights of having been on an airplane. My parents thought it would be a fun family outing, but the day of our flight turned out to be cloudy. Other than takeoff and landing, we didn’t see a thing.
After WW2, my father, who was an army officer, was posted to Freetown, West Africa. A few months later, my mother, sister and I flew out to join him. I would have been around four years old at the time. We did the same trip several times so they all tend to be conflated in my memory, but flying commercial in the 1940s was pretty different.
The plane, operated by British Overseas Airways (BOAC - later BA) was an ex-American Airforce Douglas DC2 or 3. I recall claiming a few steps up to the door near the tail and then claiming a steep slope up the aisle to my seat. There were two seats on each side. Any kids on board would be invited to the cockpit at some stage, but it wasn’t that exciting really.
The army must have given mother advice on flying with children as, although she had never flown before, she came well equipped with sweets to suck, colouring books and toys to keep us amused and quiet.
The plane did not have sufficient range to make it in one go, so we had two stops. One in Gibraltar (a very short runway even today) and one at an oasis airfield in the desert. I recall that at the desert strip, we would all disembark and hang around in a hangar while the plane was refuelled by a guy sitting on the wing, pumping fuel with a hand pump from 45-gallon barrels.
My grandfather would fly out of Erie on a Convair 580 and the only thing between you and the plane was a chain link fence. We would watch him board, the props would rev up and as the plane began to move and turn on to the runway you would be hit by the windblast from the propellers and pushed back. You were only about 50 feet away! Such fun!
I worked for British Airways in the 90s and concorde trips “Round the Bay” were very popular, From London to London flying over the Bay of Biscay and back.
My first flight was to Hawaii (My dad was being stationed there) in probably 1963. I was 4 so I don’t remember a lot about security measures. but I don’t think there were many. None really compared to today. Like someone upthread described, we pretty much showed our ticket and took our seat. I have a thing about heights so I remember having to go up a long flight of portable stairs to get on the plane and then down them after landing. The actual flight didn’t bother me but I hated those stairs.
No visit to the cockpit but we probably could have if my parents had asked.
My mom had a cousin whose husband was also stationed at Hickam and they were waiting for us on the tarmac with leis to put around our necks.
You could go pretty much anywhere in the airport without a ticket. We used to go to the airport and watch to planes take off and land, maybe get something to eat at the snack bar there. It was all pretty casual.
As a side note, LBJ came to Hawaii while we lived there. My friend’s mom took her and me to go see him. There was just a chain link fence separating him from us and I don’t recall any real security measures. He came right up to the fence and shook hands with everyone. Someone lifted me up so I could reach. I had a vague idea what a president was but was mostly impressed by how absolutely huge he seemed. His hand swallowed mine and his face seemed enormous with really deep crevices. I wanted to touch them but didn’t.
Not pre-1971, but security was definitely more lax in the early 1990s, which was the last time I did a lot of flying.
A colleague accidentally got on the wrong plane once. I don’t know where he meant to go, but he wound up in Kentucky.
On an out-of-town project where many of us flew home every weekend, we’d watch for airfare sales and buy 3-4 months worth of tickets at a time. If we didn’t travel one weekend, chances are there was a colleague who would use the ticket. No ID was checked. I suspect if the name on the ticket was obviously different from the person attempting to use it, there might have been questions, but a female colleague used several of mine, with no problems.
No, it used to be that a ticket was a ticket, good for whoever was the bearer. The airlines loved when tickets became attached to names, because it put them in control of the pricing
Yeah. They didn’t use to check who you were; unless it was an international flight, in which case they needed to check your passport. But you didn’t need ID for a domestic flight.
First flight was in 1961. We drove to the airport, parked on the airport circle, checked a bag, walked to the gate and got on. That was PHL to IND and back. Took a charter JFK (or was it still IDL?) to London (forget the airport, not Heathrow) and back in 1964 on what was advertised as a jet, but turned out not to be. On the way back, they weighed all the passengers and carry-on and then flew all the way from London to Glasgow, filled their tanks and then JFK non-stop. They did, of course, look at passports. In 1967 I flew JFK to ZRH (Zurich) on Uncle Sam’s dime that obliged me to use a US carrier. So I booked on Pan Am (I think) but they canceled the flight and rebooked me on Swissair. I never told Uncle. I guess I returned on Swissair too, although I don’t recall. There were three of us on the way over and four returned, the fourth being 6 weeks old and unvaccinated. Since they were still requiring smallpox vaccination, this was a problem. We had a letter, in German unfortunately, that explained that because he had hives, vaccination was counter-indicated and I was prepared to argue. But we had him in a small hand-held carrier and the guy at the health card desk looked at the three cards and never noticed the fourth person. We did manage to get a passport for him (although we couldn’t stop him from closing his eyes when they turned the lights on). Even with all this, it was easier in those days. In 1968, we all flew PHL to SEA at the beginning of the summer and back at the end. Babies under a certain age (2, I think) traveled free on a lap or in a carrier that hung on a bulkhead.
Pretty sure babies can still fly free - though I gather airlines sometimes will ask for proof of age.
It’s not a great idea, mind you, but you can still do it. I’ve heard of bulkhead-hung carriers but have never seen one.
The two times we flew with young kids, we bought a seat. At least, the first time, when Dweezil was about 18 months old. The next time, the kids were 4 and 1 respectively. Pretty sure we bought two seats for them that time, but I could be misremembering; we might have only bought one. In both cases, the flights were shorter - an hour or so. I can’t imagine travelling with a young child for a longer flight, without a place for him to sit.