My first experience of flying was as a passenger on a flight from a small airport near London to Freetown, (in what was then, British) West Africa. I was four at the time. It was a BOAC flight in a DC3 and we had to make two stops on the way, Gibraltar (overnight) and an oasis in the Sahara.
There were three of us, me, my sister and my mother. It wasn’t until much later that I realised how hard it must have been for her as a young mother who, having lived through the war (We were all evacuated) was now being dispatched to darkest Africa.
I imagine that several denizens of this forum have had similar experiences.
My first commercial flight* was from Idlewild Airport in NYC to Maui when I was 12. The plane stopped in San Francisco for refueling** and I remember getting out to stretch my legs. I seem to remember I spent most of the flight reading (there was no in-flight movie).
*My father was a private pilot, and would take me up for a flight around the area when I was younger.
**Odd fact: whenever I had a flight that had stop, I ended up visiting that city years later.
My mother traveled with a new born, five yo(me) and 7 yo from Idlewild to London. In 1962. Stopped in Ireland. It was a prop plane. They couldn’t seat us together. I remember sitting next to a guy in a uniform. Mom had to wear a dress and gloves, a hat. My baby sister had disposable diapers and Mom was embarrassed using them. My older sister and I had navy taffeta skirts , white blouses and anklets with Mary Janes .
In 1926, when my mom was 13, she and a classmate were winners of an art contest. The prize was a meeting with one of the Wright Brothers and short flight in a biplane. She had the time of her life.
The other winner was to be my father. His mother wouldn’t let him go, because she believed flying was dangerous.
Wilbur Wright died in 1912 of Typhoid so your mother would have likely met Orville. That’s assuming she met one of the Wright’s associated with aviation. There was another brother still alive in 1926 (Lorin).
I remember my first flight as a kid of about 12. It was a Vickers Viscount, a fairly small early turboprop that seated around 32 passengers (some later models were larger). It seems strange today that such a small plane needed four engines, but it was first made in the days when turboprops were just starting to replace piston engines, and it may have been issues of either reliability and/or power. Air Canada was at first reluctant to buy them because turbine engines were so new at the time, but it turned out to be a good decision and they became a major customer, later also placing orders for the larger, newer Vickers Vanguard. These turboprops remained in service well into the jet era, flying alongside the DC-8 and later the DC-9.
The differences from today were remarkable. There was no airport security of any kind. You checked in, got your boarding pass, and went on the plane. On Air Canada, only the jets had reserved seats. On the props, you just sat wherever you liked, like on a bus. Many props in those days had wonderfully large windows, and the ones on the Viscount were particularly panoramic. Windows started to shrink dramatically with high-flying jets (on the Concorde, designers originally wanted no windows at all!). The cabin crew were also very casual about carry-on luggage compared to today. Basically if you could lug it on board, they’d probably let you stow it wherever it would fit.
Overall, the truth is that flying back then was a much more pleasant experience than today, except for the fact that smoking was allowed. But for some, that would have been yet another advantage of the good old days!
One highlight of my flight to Freetown was at the refuelling stop in the desert. We all had to leave the plane and stand in what was then known as an ‘elephant shelter’.
The airfield had been both Luftwaffe and RAF during the war. The hangar was just a corrugated iron tunnel, open at both ends and we could see a local, standing on the wing, using a handpump puffing on a cigarette. The pilot and co-pilot were both at the bar with ice-cold pints of beer.
My first commercial flight was on a Lockheed Constellation from Los Angeles to San Francisco. By way of Fresno. This would have been about 1962 or '63, so not nearly as early or as exciting as some of these other stories.
You’re younger than I am, but I’ve never been on a piston-engined airliner. Probably only because Air Canada, the major national carrier at the time and still today, was in the leading edge of the transition to turboprops and jets.
The Constellation was a beautiful classic of its time, renowned for its elegantly aesthetic shape and distinctive tail. I do vaguely recall them flying overhead when I was just a toddler. Air Canada (then Trans-Canada Air Lines) flew them:
Another fond memory of the good old days is when I finally got to fly on a DC-8. This was long before the advent of high-bypass turbofans, back in the days when jet engines were LOUD!!! When the DC-8 took off, the exciting feeling of acceleration was accompanied by a terrific roar that would not have been out of place for a rocket going to Mars! We don’t get that excitement today.
OTOH, what we have today is fuel economy and relative quiet for the thousands of square miles surrounding major international airports, and a much higher level of safety. Let’s face it, compared to today, DC-8s and their brethren, the Boeing 707s, were much more prone to accidents. The Air France crash of flight 007 in 1962 was the worst single-aircraft disaster at the time, and wiped out most of the Atlanta Art Association who were returning home from an art tour of Europe, veritable icons of the new “jet age”. The airplane simply failed to leave the ground. Air Canada, renowned for its safety record and safety standards, lost two DC-8s, one just after takeoff from Montreal (the famous crash at St Therese) and one on approach to Toronto.
My first flight around that time would have probably been a DC-4 or DC-6.
I wish it had been a Connie. There are a handful of planes at Oshkosh that will get pilots to stop what they’re doing and look up. The Constellation is one of them. It reeks of the glory of post WWII transport aviation.
I flew on a propeller-driven military troop transport plane when I was about 5 (circa 1960). I can’t remember specifically which type, but I do recall my mom getting frustrated with my “are we there yet” inquiries.
1955, red-eye from Seattle to Detroit (my father had bought a new Dodge through his brother and had arranged to pick it up at the factory). Northwest Orient, probably a DC-6 or -7.
Since I was 7 I don’t remember many details, though I do recall an unscheduled stop (“magneto trouble”). Nobody seemed to be that perturbed, so I gather it was not particularly unusual.
As wolfpup noted, the differences in security (nonexistent) and boarding procedures (casual) are striking in contrast to today. One other thing I remember is being given chewing gum to alleviate ear-popping — pressurization is another thing that’s changed since then (I believe adults were given cigarettes for the same purpose).
I flew in 1946, my uncle had a Cessna 120, but I never flew commercial until 1963 when Montreal-Toronto was pretty ho-hum But a couple years later I flew North Central, which still flew DC3s
My most rustic was a domestic Bulgarian flight in the 60s… The approaching plane radioed the town ticket office, who then packed the passengers into vans and drove us to the grass strip to meet the arriving Ilyushin prop…
I flew a Constellation in Colombia – the pilots shut off two of the 4 props to cruise economical over the Amazon
It’s nice nowadays to look out of deHavillands and see props spinning., om short flights in Somalia and Philippines.
My first flight that I have memory of was when I was 7 years old. (I may have flown to California as a toddler, but I’ll have to ask my mother if we flew or drove cross-country.) Anyway, when I was 7, I flew on a Pan Am 747 from Houston Intercontinental Airport to Frankfurt (West Germany) in the early 1970s. I remember getting a tour of the cockpit at some point in the long flight and getting a plastic set of Pan Am “junior pilot” wings.
At some point in the 1960s, I flew on a Vickers Viscount also. I was a child, and I remember the Chiclets gum that the stewardesses (as they were then known) passed out before takeoff and landing. No cigarettes for the adults though; they got gum too, though they could light up once we were aloft. Anyway, I well remember how big those windows were, as I had a window seat.
That was an Air Canada Viscount, but before that flight, I flew on Trans-Canada Airlines also, before it was re-branded as Air Canada. This would have been maybe about 1964, on a jet between Calgary and Toronto. As was common in those days, everybody dressed up to travel, even kids; and I recall unhappily having to wear a jacket, tie, grey flannel trousers, and Oxford shoes. But the flight was fun (my first time flying), and the flight crew gave me a TCA tote bag and a little plastic airplane.
Go forward to 2012. I’m again flying Air Canada between Toronto and Calgary. For some reason, my aircraft is decked out in early 1960s TCA livery. It was just as I remembered from my first flight all those years ago, and it was a very nice surprise!
That reminds me of something more recent. Definitely not “early days of air transport”, but my how times have changed in just a few decades! One of the most pleasant flights I’ve ever been on was Toronto to New York (LGA) with my parents and my young son. This must have been around the late 90s.
The plane was an Airbus (A320 class, maybe A321), and we were all in business class, flying free on points. The best part was that all the riffraff were back in economy, and business class was almost empty. We got lots of attention from the cabin crew, and when my son rather brazenly asked to see the cockpit, the flight attendant cheerfully obliged. Needless to say, this was before 9/11.
Not only did she cheerfully oblige, but the kid went up there and didn’t come back. Later the flight attendant came by and suggested I should go up myself and take a look. He was seated on the floor, behind the center console in between the two pilots, observing and chatting, and looking like he was planted there for the duration. He didn’t come back until the flight started its final approach.
I don’t think he got any special gifts on that flight, but the rest of it makes up for it. On the flight back, he asked to see the cockpit again, and that time got a bunch of postcard pictures, a flight magazine for kids, and some other stuff.
Yes, I think any air travel from the latter part of the 20th century could be described as “the golden age”.
At least on the outside of the aircraft. Inside, you no longer get the history–the complimentary inflight meal that you used to get (unless you’re in business class), but rather reheated Swiss Chalet or Subway, at prices higher than you could get from takeout, and they only take credit cards. There’s a reason I fly business class on Air Canada now. Times change, and I understand why.
And they do change. Thinking back to those 1960s flights, I remember having to walk downstairs in order to walk across the apron to the set of stairs on the back of a pickup truck, that we all climbed to get into the aircraft. And the reverse at the other end. Jetways had not been invented.
I remember flying from Toronto to Athens in the late 1970s, through a jetway at the Toronto end. On leaving Toronto–“Wow–you mean we can walk onto the aircraft instead of descending and climbing stairs up into the aircraft? This is great!” But on arrival in Athens, we were met by the pickup truck with the stairs. And that’s how we boarded when we left Athens too.
Times change, and I understand why.