Where Did you Go ?

My first time on a plane was with a private pilot in his small plane. My husband had been taking flying lessons and his instructor found out I had never been in a plane and offered to take me up. I was about 22 years old and I loved every minute of the flight. Small plane or large, I've loved flying ever since.
 
I was fifteen on my first flight. It was from my aunt's house in Williamsport Pennsylvania to Charleston West Virginia. I missed my connecting flight because I couldn't understand the announcer. My father never let me live that down.
 
Los Angeles to Chicago and then Chicago to Madison, WI. I remember we were all dressed up for the flight and even though I don't have those pictures I can clearly see them in my head. It was probably about '63 or '64. My favorite memory of the trip was the flight back when we were flying over thunderstorms at night and I could see the clouds below us lighting up from the lightning.
 
Duster said:
My first time on a plane
Click to expand...

First flight

Mid '60s
High school, after school job
My boss (the owner) was a plane nut
Some sorta flight instructor
One afternoon he said 'let's go up'
He had this tail dragger '48 trainer he'd rebuilt
Prop start
Pulled it outa the hanger
Prop started
Got in (two seater, front/back)
taxied
got the OK
Off we went
Cedar Hills OR to Scappoose OR
Fun, scenic
After we finished our coffee at Scappoose airport we cranked the prop
got back in
Only he asked me to sit in the front
Once we got back up, leveled off at altitude, he handed me the stick
Move the stick back, you go up
Forward, down
To the right, you go right

He asked me to level it off
Moments after, all went quiet
Just the whistling of air off the wings

He started cussing
Never heard him cuss in my life

Thought to myself, 'well this is it'

He told me to hand him the stick
Like in the cartoons, I handed him the stick
We came in on what he called a 'dead stick landing'
Landed in a pasture beside Cedar Hills airport


Once on the ground, with my feet, he laughed at the size of my eyes when handing him the stick

Me, I kissed the ground

Later, he told me he'd turned off the key to give me a scare
He didn't count on the prop freezing from the engine being so tight after a recent rebuild

Years later, that same plane made the local headlines
Landing on a street near Tektronics
 
1955, Mam and I flew to Syria to join my dad who was working at one of the oil pumping stations in the middle of the desert. Once we landed there was a car waiting to drive us through the desert to the pumping station. The car broke down en route and we just had to sit and wait for rescue party to come out for us. I thought it was a great adventure, mam not so much! ;)

Syria.JPG
 
I was 12 yo, early 1970’s and we flew from LAX to Albany New York to visit my brother and his family who lived near Saratoga Springs. Loved looking down at the country and I could not get over the difference between Los Angeles huge airport in the middle of the urban sprawl and the more secluded location of the smaller Albany airport surrounded by trees. I kept saying, “it’s GREEN” in wonderment!
 
Paris and EuroDisney - about 25 years ago. The day Concorde caught fire on the runway at Charles De Gaul Airport. We lost a full day! When we arrived we met a family that had driven there from near us in NW England. They beat us there by 6 hours!
 
I already had a couple of "Jollies", flights for the
cadets.

The first from A to B flight I had was in 1960 from
RAF Manston in Kent to RAF Wildenrath in Germany,
the 5th flight for troops, prior to then it was a sea
crossing on a troopship.

Mike
 
I was in the Royal Observer Corps and in 1967 went on an "Air experience flight" in a "Beverley" of RAF Air Support Command.
It was exciting the first few times that I flew, but I've made so many flights that now it's just another way to get from A to B.
 
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