Dad’s was a four door, so the back window wasn’t as nice as that one, but the cloth seats sure were better than the black vinyl ones of the '68, which burned every single time you sat.
I think that car got +/- 17 MPG highway. With a 200 gallon gas tank. 
Oh, we weren’t allowed on the shelf in the '60s cars because “it would collapse.” 
My first flight was, I think, when I was maybe ten, when we moved from Juneau to Anchorage. After that, a couple of flights to Oregon with my mother to visit her mother and sister. Otherwise, it was all road trips until I was about 18.
Only once, when I was maybe 10 years old ca. 1991, we flew from Portland to Great Falls to visit family.
The only other time I’ve flown was in 2008 when I accompanied my mom, who needed an aide of some sort to make that kind of trip, from Eugene → Seattle → Kalispell and back.
My family much preferred road trips, going camping, and doing whitewater rafting trips. To this day I’ve only visited 5 other states outside Oregon, all in the NW, all travelled to by car except for the above two exceptions (been to California [only as far south as Redding], Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming – and that was only to see Yellowstone and Teton).
The idea of flying makes me apprehensive enough that I’ve actively avoided doing so. The flying itself is fine, but I know so little about everything else: the arrival/check-in/boarding process, how luggage handling and retrieval works, the difference between a ticket and a boarding pass and how to acquire either, and all the rest of that performative nonsense that I’m sure everyone else has become jaded to that I’ve always planned any vacations to avoid flying. We want to visit Hawaii and Alaska in the next few years so that may change.
I first flew from just outside London to Freetown when I was four. I soon decided that flying was the most boring way to travel there was/is and have rarely flown anywhere as an adult.
Born in '75. My first plane ride was when I was 3 years old. We were moving to Iran (Dad got a job with Bell Helicopter). Cleveland - Dallas - Athens - Tehran I believe was the route, American Airlines. It was this flight that got me into my lifelong obsession with aviation. Our flight out in 1979 was on a C-130 courtesy of the USAF, that flight cemented my lifelong obsession with military aviation. Unfortunately I did not get any opportunity to fly again (aside from a flight on a Bonanza with my pilot Uncle) until a trip to DC in High School. We were a family of 6 with a limited income and flying was just too expensive compared to road trips in the family station wagon. The HS flight was part of a school program. I started taking flight on a semi-regular basis in college with cheap flights between Chicago (school) and Cleveland (home).
I wonder if there is anyone on the Board who has never flown. Sort of a 40-year-old-virgin situation.
We were also a road trip family. Mom flew by herself a few times; she had relatives in Hawaii and Dad remained home to take care of us kids.
There were a couple of times when both of them flew; I was in high school and the only one still at home. First time, they didn’t trust me and left me with one of my sisters & her husband for a week.
Same here!
When I was six, my parents took me to Disney World.
When I was fourteen or fifteen, we went back so my little sister could see it.
Those were all my flights before the age of 18. Since then I’ve taken hundreds.
First flight I must’ve been 14/15, parents surprised me with tix to visit my BF in DC.
Flew solo, was nervous at all!
Once, when I was 5. That was in 1962. Didn’t fly again til I was in my 20s.
I had one flight with my mother when I was about 8, primarily to visit her friends (and mine) in MASS after my family moved to NM just before I turned 6.
From 10-15 I generally flew 2-3 times (round trip) a year as my parents divorced when I was 8 and split custody, and my mother moved out of state after the first two years. So Winter and Summer breaks, sometimes Spring break. I can’t recall flying for any other reasons (we were also a driving family for vacations, including driving to Colorado!) until I began to check out universities I was considering applying too, and even then, drove to several of them. Also arguably not a child at that point.
November 7-8, 1961, a week shy of my 10th birthday, from New York to the Congo. Pan Am 707, first class, which the UN paid for. My father was already there, and my mother and younger brother were going to meet him and stay.
The next one after the return trip was to Miami in 1966. There was a lot less flying back then.
My first flight was at age 15.
I think airline tickets in Pakistan in the 1970s for domestic flights (max ~800 miles) were on the order of a month’s salary for a white collar worker.
It just wasn’t affordable for most people. My father flew often for work and almost every single person flying seemed quite well off. Suit and tie, nice briefcase, arrived at airport in car with driver.
And that was in 2003, which means I never got to experience flying before 9/11.
But while I’m not a super frequent flier, I have at least flown a couple of times per year since then (not counting the COVID years).
I only flew once as a child. As with most Boomers, family trips were by car. But when I was about 10, my mom and her cousin decided to take me, my sisters, and my cousins to Disneyland (from the Bay Area). As an extra treat, they decided we would fly to Los Angeles and take the train back (probably Oakland).
Years later, my mom told me that she and her cousin were pissed that my cousins and I read comic books the whole flight and spent almost no time looking out the plane windows. I barely remember the flight but have distinct memories of the train ride back.
Zero times. And my parents were both US postal workers, so we were financially fine (at least when I was older, after my mom started working). They flew for the conventions, but we kids never did. That both sets of their parents and 4 of 5 of their siblings were within in hour’s drive probably contributed. I flew for the first time in my 20s on a work trip. I’m a homebody, actually, and have never flown anywhere except for a few conferences for work.
We lived in Alabama, and vacations were overwhelmingly driving vacations to the beach in the Florida panhandle (cousins had a trailer there). We did go to Disney World a couple times (when there were conventions) and we went to Opryland, so there must have been a convention there.
I’ve flown 5 times in my life. The first time was when I was 8 and we went to Disney World. That was the only time I flew as a child.
Once. Otherwise, not at all. We had a 1965 Chrysler station wagon. Luggage on top, 6 people and a dog inside. Chicago → Miami or Chicago → Denver. No air-conditioning of course.
Also had a 72 Chrysler wagon. Burnt a valve somewhere in eastern Colorado. We limped to Denver at about 40 mph.
My father was a recently retired Air Force pilot when I was a child. We often spent Sunday morning flying about for fun; typically in small Cessnas, but once in a Stearman biplane. And as a member of Air Force Junior ROTC, we had annual flying field trips in Air Guard C-130s or Army Guard Hueys.
My only commercial flights as a child was for an 8th grade field trip.
At the age of 11 I flew from Liverpool to the Isle of Man as an unaccompanied minor to spend a week with my Aunt (my previous trips their had been with the family by ferry) that was my ony commercial flight before the age of 21.
At the age of 14 I joined the cadet force (Air force) which enabled me to fly in a two seater (Chipmonk) about twice a year until I was 18. I also had a chance to spend a day flying gliders, only problem is one oif the pilots was suicidal. There were no thermals around so most of the flights were winched ot 1000ft then spend about 5 min on slow descent, on one of my (3) flights the pilot wanted to show me some aerobatics so dived from 1000 to maybe 300ft to pick up speed then did 3 loops we cam out of the last one so low he had to stick up to get over the hanger before we landed (you are supposed to come OUT of aerobatics at 1000 ft)