What was your first flight?

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My first flight was 1966 as a third year medical student. Went with one of my mates. I think we chanced it with Ansett. I really don't have any memories of the flight. Probably because we decided to have a beer in every pub of any place beginning with W. We landed in Wellington.
 
My first flight was in the UK in the late 1950's, when my dad took me up for a short flight in an Auster light aircraft.

He was a member of the local aero club, and the flight probably set me up for my lifetime interest in aviation.
 
1989 Britannia Airways 767 (I think) to Corfu, all I remember was very loud seat fabric, a smoking section and plastic tube contraptions for headphones !!
 
This has been an interesting read, partly because I was yet to be born on all the dates mentioned in this thread :oops:.
  • My first domestic flight would've been WLG-AKL return in around 2005, on New Zealand QF Domestic
  • First international flight would've been probably WLG-SYD some time in 2006. Likely QF but unsure
  • First flight further than Australia / in a widebody jet would've been WLG-xSYD-HKG in QF & CX. Most likely an A330
I vividly remember 10yo me being very impressed with the seatback IFE on the Cathay A330, which looked something like this.
1664623731311.png
 
Navy days, 1981 Melbourne to Canberra on TAA. Think I remember the acronym (DRAF) difference between
the rail and airfare out of your own pocket. How times have changed.
 
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Navy days, 1981 Melbourne to Canberra on TAA. Cant remember the acronym but you paid the difference between
the rail and airfare out of your own pocket. How times have changed.
Try Another Airline ? Jokes

for me was Ansett Fokker friendship from Kingscote to Adelaide - probably mid 70s
my first paid flight we did indeed Try Another Airline to Melbourne pretty sure it was mid 80s...727 (?)

international SQ to SIN. I RECALL using a local travel agent in Ipoh to book me out of there via KL back to SIN
First big trip backpackers trip to Europe I did travel with Lufthansa in early 90s cause they flew to Sydney at that point AND offered two side trips in the price (went to exotic Istanbul and then Stockholm later) in the nearly 5 months away. Also managed to lose a passport at Dover on that trip, took awhile for Australia House to deliver a new one let alone a credit card too, and it was way easier to change return flight dates then than now!

and I arrived in Sydney without my bag. Turns out back in the day of handwritten bag tags, the guy who checked me in wrote a non-existent flight number on it and it was still sitting in a baggage crate in Frankfurt! So that was my intro to 1st class toiletry packs!! As a sorry we stuffed up. ....
 
It all started on a calm, fateful evening in May 2004. I'd never been on a flight, neither domestic nor international. At the time, I didn't even think I'd ever fly anywhere or even have a reason to fly anywhere.

I was but a wee little child at BLR airport, with my parents and 2 little brothers, about to shift life over to MEL. It was an SQ flight and I remember being absolutely wowed at having these pieces of card stock called boarding passes with these strange codes BLR, SIN, MEL on them.

Boarded the flight, and the first thing my brothers and I noticed was the TV screen at the back of the seat in front. On both flights BLR -SIN and SIN-MEL, the 3 of us did not get an iota of anything that could be considered sleep. We had found the "Games" section of the IFE, and one of the games was a Mario Kart lookalike. Even the meals we found grandeur, as we just couldn't imagine being in a metal tube hurling through the air at >800km/h eating a meal and having a drink.

Alas the fun was short lived and before we knew it we landed at MEL, and the rest is history as they say.

Needles to say I'm still a regular SQ flyer, and when I discovered that KF points, which can be transfered from Amex MR, can be used to book SQ J, well we all know how that ends up.
 
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Loving this thread so far - have given a like or <3 to every post.

First airline passenger flight I VAGUELY remember was in the late seventies as a child - top deck of a South African Airways (Suid Afrikaanse Lugdiens my first foray in to learning Afrikaans) the smell of cigarettes stank but I was placated with the kid's puzzle and games handouts - from Perth to Jo'burg then a 707 up to Salisbury (Harare these days) as we went to Rhodesia for a while. I remember the flight in a DC3 from Salisbury up to Vic Falls - the bush war was on and I was fascinated by the soldiers and army vehicles and guns everywhere

The first flight I clearly remember as a passenger was from Perth to KL on a Malaysia Airlines System (MAS) DC-10 in 1985 (the old international airport) when I was 12. My mum's BFF worked for MAS so we got upgraded to the first row of First Class, and I sat next to Mrs Tonkin, the wife of the former WA Premier. I was so excited about the flight itself I couldn't stop babbling to her, and my Mum told me to STFU during the flight
In later years, every time I drove on Tonkin Highway in Perth, I remembered how kind "Mrs Tonkin" was to me on the flight.
 
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I don't remember my first flight on a DC3 from LHR to BRU. I was a baby and travelling with my mother and sister to join my father working in Brussels. I'm told that for part of the flight I was placed on the floor and smiled and clapped during the turbulence (obviously no safety concerns in those days).
There were many other flights that I don't recall as a child. The first I do remember was ADL - MEL on TAA in the mid 70s travelling as an unaccompanied minor to rejoin my parents.
Like others I did the trip from SYD- LHR via KUL and BAH. On departure from KUL the flight received a bomb threat and we were all deplaned and taken to a hotel overnight which was a bit of excitement. My main memory of BAH is armed guards.
 
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Mmmm, stretching the memory a bit. Probably in 1968 as an 8 year old on a Qantas 707 Sydney to Christchurch for a family holiday on a Tiki Tours bus trip around the South Island.

My other early memory is from around 1972 of a school excursion day trip Syd-Cbr. Previously the Year 6 classes bussed down and spent the week there but the year prior it is alleged one of the teachers got drunk and behaved inappropriately with students. So we didn’t sleep over but had a very long, jam-filled day.

I believe it was a TAA 727 filled by us. Such a rapid take-off and steep climb. I recall one overweight boy had what was probably a panic attack but it looked like a heart attack to the inexperienced.
 
Loving this thread so far - have given a like or <3 to every post.

First airline passenger flight I VAGUELY remember was in the late seventies as a child - top deck of a South African Airways (Suid Afrikaanse Lugdiens my first foray in to learning Afrikaans) the smell of cigarettes stank but I was placated with the kid's puzzle and games handouts - from Perth to Jo'burg then a 707 up to Salisbury (Harare these days) as we went to Rhodesia for a while. I remember the flight in a DC3 from Salisbury up to Vic Falls - the bush war was on and I was fascinated by the soldiers and army vehicles and guns everywhere

The first flight I clearly remember as a passenger was from Perth to KL on a Malaysia Airlines System (MAS) DC-10 in 1985 (the old international airport) when I was 12. My mum's BFF worked for MAS so we got upgraded to the first row of First Class, and I sat next to Mrs Tonkin, the wife of the former WA Premier. I was so excited about the flight itself I couldn't stop babbling to her, and my Mum told me to STFU during the flight
In later years, every time I drove on Tonkin Highway in Perth, I remembered how kind "Mrs Tonkin" was to me on the flight.
Ah I'd forgotten those days of sitting in the nonsmoking section, directly behind a smoker in the smoking section
 
I had already started work when I had my first flight and I'm pretty sure it was the Fokker Friendship Adelaide to Mount Gambier or vv. The other alternative was my first ever holiday after I started work and flying from Adelaide to Kangaroo Island in a little bitty thing and being scared to touch anything when I sat up the front next to to the pilot
 
1989. South African Airways (SAL at the time, as another posted above noted) 747 from Cape Town to Las Palmas, then to London and onto a SAS flight to Stockholm to visit my mother's family and then to Norway for my father's family.

I was tiny and obviously don't remember, but I appreciate now that it was deep in the days of Apartheid when SAA wasn't permitted to fly over most African countries, hence the oceanic detour and refuel stop in the Canary Islands.

Side-note: growing up spending part of the year in South Africa and part of the year in Sweden was as stunning a contradiction as you can imagine.
 
First flight was probably PER-HKG in the late 70s if CX flew such a direct route (or even indirect via SIN or KUL) and on a DC-10 I believe. If not direct it would likely have been via another capital city that had direct flights to HKG. I’m relying on my parents memory for this.

The first flight I can reasonably recall was travelling on a C130E out of Butterworth in probably 1980. We took the RAAF flights back to Darwin (via Singapore I believe) and then points further south during my fathers posting over there. They were long days for a little kid, especially when we didn’t have the rolls of foam like the Loadies did, which they would unroll on top of the cargo pallets and use for sleeping!
Better trips were an, or some journeys on the RAAF 707s in 1981 rather than the much slower Hercs.

Young Master Scarlett took his first flight as a 3-month old (QF504 SYD-BNE B737-400) and has now done about 235 flights… kids these days; they don’t know how lucky they’ve got it!
 
My first was in 1974, aged 7, - on TAA - SYD-BNE-CNS and back on a variety of DC9s and 727s. I have a hazy memory that it was the old terminal in Brisbane at Eagle Farm and it being fairly simple. Lots of family came to wave us off at SYD where there was a roof terrace on the terminal. I remember the planes having a sort of wall paper with different cities on it.
 
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