Your first time flying

[HighburyLass]

Just out of interest following a conversation with dh.

Where did you fly to?
How old were you?
what year was it?

For me, it was 1982, I was 13 and we flew to Boston USA! I was so excited! An enormous plane, headphones plugged into the seat to listen to music and a large screen film (no choice of movie). 3 course dinner, snacks, fizzy drinks, I felt so spoilt! It all seemed so glamorous.

You?

I was nearly 20. Greece. I asked to swap to the window seat and this really nice older couple let me when I said it was my first time. I remember loving the airline meal of sausage and mash! 😄

Age 5.5 to Singapore, RAF flight i think. Only a vague memory of playing in an open space. I know my mum was annoyed that the person in front complained about me kicking their chair when I hadnt.

Amsterdam to London.
I was about 5. My dad's mums had died and it was to attend her funeral.
Sister and I didn't attend that.
I can remember being dressed in our best clothes and the stewardess giving us a KLM badge

5, Portugal - still remember that it was strawberry mousse for dessert.

I grew up abroad and lived in a city, but we flew to a rural area to visit relatives. I was 4 and it was 1982. The plane had propellors and was so noisy. I was dressed in a pink dress with lace and a matching hat! People in the town assumed I was dressed up as a bridesmaid.

I was a baby. Late 1970s. We flew to visit relatives in the US. It was a great trip - apparently 😆

I was 9 and i was flying to Dubai with my mum and dad. My dad worked abroad a lot and this was the first time we were able to join him.. Left everything and everyone behind for a new life. I remember the feeling of the plane taking off, it seemed to tilt back forever!! And being sick multiple times lol. Probably all the fizzy pop I drank at the airport. We flew back on Concorde!!! So excited!!

I was 4, so it would have been 1963 or 4. I flew with my Mum from Newcastle to London. We sat at the back of the plane because my Grandad said that was the last bit to hit the ground if the plane crashed. He was a strange man.

5ish, 1965, Heathrow (London Airport as it was then) to Nice with my mother, to join my grandparents who were on holiday in Juan Le Pins.

I was 20mths old in October 1972. We went to Tunisia, my mum was 6 months pregnant with my brother, too. I don’t have a clue about it.

Six weeks old, London to Kuwait. Early 1950s.
I was apparently the youngest person to fly that route then.
I often wonder how it was for my Mum, London born and raised, to leave the country for a (then far-away) destination to start a new life there with a new baby and joining a new-ish husband she really could not have known very well.
It all worked out well for her, and us, but l still think she was very brave.

I had just turned 18, had never before left home or been out of my home country, and was flying to the south of France as an au pair, with a change at LHR. Absolutely petrified.

I was 13, 1990s. It was our first ever summer holiday. We went to the south of France

Think I must have been around 9.

Flew to Puerto Rico for a cruise with my Grandparents-which I sadly realised later was because my parents were divorcing and wanted us away for a bit.

55 and have never been on a plane!

Age 8, school ski trip, Italy, c1981.

I remember my dad reassuring me that flying was ‘just like being on a bus.’

Mum told me years later they had struggled to pay for the trip but I had really wanted to go. Never knew how worried she was until years later. I remember phoning home once from a telephone on the wall of the hotel. The only person who came home injured was a teacher who hurt her hand opening a wine bottle! I remember at arriving back at school all the parents bursting into collective laughter as she got off the coach with a bandaged hand!

Seems young to me now to have done that but it was brilliant and gave me a love of skiing and the snow covered mountains.

i was about 11. There had just been a massive plane crash where a family friend had died, and my parents were trying to stop us all being scared of flying. We did a circular Santa flight and it only lasted about an hour. I was terrified!

Growing up I didn’t know anyone who had even been abroad.

I have been abroad once but that was on a ferry and was only two days.

I was 14 and went to Germany on a school exchange.
This was in the 1970s.

1982 aged 8 to Hong Kong. On British Caledonian Airways. We had a fuel stop in Dubai where we got off the plane for an hour or so and and we saw Judith Chalmers from Wish You Were Here.

My mum was flying solo with me and my siblings and we were joining my dad who had moved out several weeks before us to start his two year military post. Goodness knows how my mother managed it all on her own. I think she'd only flown twice in her life at that point.

The films shown were Tootsie and On Golden Pond. It was all very exciting and I remember the colouring pack we were given. My brother was allowed into the cockpit as it was his birthday. Different times indeed!!

Ibiza in 1977 when I was five. We flew from Heathrow. My dad came to pick me up from school in the middle of the day!

Genuinely curious, do you ever feel you’ve missed out?

1990 I was 15. School trip/exchange to America.
We didn’t have a lot of money so it was a really big deal (I’d never asked to go on school trips abroad before then)

1992, I was 1. It was one of the Spanish islands.

1997, day after my 25th birthday, work trip to Zurich. I was much more worried about navigating Heathrow than flying, but my colleagues didn't understand why I was asking what I had to do, because thry couldn't get their heads round the fact someone had reached adulthood without ever flying.

I had been to France on school trips, but we got the Sealink ferry from Weymouth for all those.

I loved it, and have since travelled the world, including some trips in small planes, like a two-seater Cessna.