October 1986, Newark to Orlando on People’s Express. I was 15 years old.
A friend’s cousin, who I happened to also know, had grabbed six round-trip tickets for a sale price of $49, and he offered for my friend to come along. When he mentioned it to me, I (with my parents’ permission, of course) called the cousin and got myself in on the deal. Awesome, awesome fun three-day trip.
In the summer of 1952, I was 13. I had been in an auto accident in which my grandfather was killed. I was near Dayton, OH visiting my grandparents and normally would have rode home in our car with my mother. I flew from Cincinnati to Atlanta. The Atlanta airport back then was a huge quansa hut, not what they now call the old airport.
January 1983, probably 10 days old or so. The flight would have been from either Dayton or Columbus, Ohio to Boston following the death of my maternal grandmother which happened very soon after I was born.
My first airpline ride was ca. 1935-36 in a TravelAir biplane. We had a local pilot and a couple of us hung around the airport and did odd jobs. In return we would get an occasional ride.
My first commercial air trip was in 1951 from Los Angeles to Chicago Midway Airport. We landed in a near blizzard and from what I heard around the airport as I was getting my luggage we were about the last plane in before weather closed down the airport. On the way by taxi uptown through the storm to the Palmer House Hotel the cab driver pointed out a guy carrying a 50 lb. block of ice. We figured he started out with 25 lb.
I was about 22, living near Orlando and working with a crew in Miami. My family called to say my Grandfather had died and a ticket was awaiting me at the airport. I didn’t really get to enjoy the first flight I had looked forward to my whole life. I recall that it seemed like we climbed to altitude, leveled off for about 3 minutes and the began our decent towards Orlando.
1953, deadheading from Moncton, New Brunswick to Gander, Newfoundland on a Canadian Department of Transport Beech C-45 Expeditor. I was 2 months old, going home to Gander where my father was an air traffic controller. (I was the first child, and Mum went home to her Mum to have me someplace with a “real hospital”, as Gander Hospital was still not much improoved from the original WW2 military clinic at the time).
We flew round trips back to Moncton 2-3 times a year, I believe entirely deadheading in empty seats on the weekly DOT liasion flights, until Dad was transferred to Toronto when I was 6. I was an early-blooming airplane buff, and could identify the planes flying overhead as they landed or took off from Gander airport by the engine sound! Didn’t fly again until I was 18, when we had a short helicopter familiarisation flight during a militia training exercise. Didn’t fly commercial until I went to Europe on vacation in 1978 (when the Air Canada 747 we were on shut down first one, then a second engine before we even reached Ireland, and demonstrated the advantages of being an airplune buff, as I knew that we would be fuel light by that time and the two remaining engines would be enough to get us safely to Heathrow).
1972, when I was 20. I got a lift from a friend in a 2-seater from Eugene, Oregon to Shasta, California. I was very worried about accidentally touching the controls on my side of the plane. A few weeks later I had my second flight in a big jet from San Francisco to New York. The first flight was way cooler.
I was twenty and flew from Pennsylvania to Louisiana with my parents and sister. We landed at DFW and had to get on a little plane to get to the Shreveport airport, and then drive nearly two hours to get to our destination from there. A year later I flew from Louisiana to Toronto to see my boyfriend, and made the same trip again three months later for my birthday present. In 2004 I flew from Houston to San Francisco for spring break.
I thought I’d made more plane trips than that.
1961 Boeing 707 LA to Kansas City on the red eye. Then a plane change to a DC-3 and on to St. Louis.
Yep my very second flight was on a DC-godamn-3. 
In 1968 at the age of 8 months I flew with my parents from Syracuse NY to somewhere in California for my uncle’s wedding.
The first flight I remember was in 1980 from Columbus to Pittsburgh, the first leg of a trip to Germany to meet my dad’s family. I spent the whole 40-minute flight with my nose pressed to the window, studying the tiny houses and roads below.
1975 - London to South Africa
1986 - South Africa to London
I lived in S.A. for 11 years!! I’m planning on going back there for a holiday someday - hopefully next year!!
2005 - London to Somewhere-in-America-But-I-Won’t-Know-Where*-Until-I’ve-Booked-My-Tickets to Cleveland and back again!!
…
Oh… and the Virgin Atlantic “Flying Without Fear” course - which includes a 45-minute flight - coz I’m the world’s biggest scaredy cat…
If we’re going to list all of our plane trips, then I want to play, too.
1979 - India to Michigan.
1984 - Michigan to White Plains, NY to meet family.
1985 - New York to India for one month.
1990 (summer) NY to India for two of the most glorious, hottest months of my life. Loved it.
1990 (winter) NY to India - one month with my mother. :rolleyes: Not quite as glorious.
1993 (fall) Last trip to India for one month.
Haven’t been back since, and I miss my family.
My uncle was a pilot and had a Cessna. He’d fly his nieces and nephews around a couple of times a year. When I was 12, he taught me how to land.
First commercial flight was 1991 when I was 23. I was flying from Montgomery to Denver on Delta, first class. I’d never been on a big plane before and didn’t know to turn right when I walked on the plane to find my seat. I turned left into the cockpit. I met three very nice guys from Atlanta who laughed and escorted me to my seat.
Summer of 1964 - I was 4 1/2. A trip to Germany to visit relatives (in my case, to meet them for the first time in my life).
Seems surreal now, I remember looking at trucks and cars on the ground after takeoff and thinking they looked like Matchbox cars. I wasn’t afraid of flying.
Nowadays I’m a rather jittery traveler - not because of security and all that crap, just that I hate turbulence with an undying passion. Ditto for night flying, when I can’t see anything outside.
My first flight was on my dad’s company Lear jet in about 1979/80. I must have been about 6 or 7. I remember my sister looking up at the ceiling and seeing a button that said EMERGENCY or something of the sort and she pressed it and all the face masks dropped out. The pilot was not amused as he had to put them all back. We flew from Messina (in South Africa) to Harare, Zimbabwe, although it was still called Salisbury then. We didn’t get out of the plane, but flew straight back.
My next most memorable flight was when we were living in Zimbabwe and one of our neighbours had his own 4 seater twin engine plane and flew us back to boarding school. Our school had its own private airstrip because a lot of farmers had their own planes. That was cool.
I’ve flown plenty times commercially since then, the most recent being about 2 weeks ago on a trip to Trinidad, but those two are my most memorable.
according to our family legend, my brother once threw up down the back of my father’s neck while he was flying the plane !
after that incident, we kids had to show a “boarding pass” (plastic back for sick) before we were allowed on the plane. (and i used mine almost every flight)
Compared to all of youse, my story is boring. (Hey, what else is new? ;))
1992 (or early 1993), late-night trip to Florida. I remember, as a very little youngling, running up and down the aisles and ducking around the legs of the stewardesses, and not much else.
(Next flight, to Edmonton about five years later, I completely freaked out on the way back, shook like I was having seizures and babbled insanely to a poor little old lady who patted my hand reassuringly. I still don’t know who she is, but I should send her a thank-you note for putting up with me on that landing.)
Nothing special - 1991, I was 18 years old and flying home from college for Thanksgiving. USAir - Baltimore to Pittsburgh, then Pittsburgh to Erie. Nothing particularly memorable happened.
The surprise for me in this thread is how many people flew in light planes before ever riding in a commercial aircraft.
I’ve got a story to go along with the “throwing up on the pilot” one. Daughter had been sleeping comfortably in the back of our Cessna 172 all of the way from Chicago to Kalamazoo. Only to wake up as we’re on short final. As I keyed the mike to let the tower know I was on short final, the back seat says over the intercom (so the tower could hear it), “Hey Dad, don’t land on the road.”