My very first Flight.
 

My very first flight was in a blue Auster in the late 1950s. It was a pleasure flight from Elstree and consisted of a circuit around the reservoir. My dear Dad, who until then had only flown in a Dakota, came along too and I remember how he gripped my shoulder in alarm when the pilot throttled back on base leg. I loved it so much that I bullied him into coughing up for a second ride. He resolutely remained on the ground.

Mine was an "Air Experience" flight in a T21 Sedburg from Burtonwood in the winter of 1961/62...the first of 50 odd types I've flown/flown in

Chippy at RAF Chivenor August 1957 ATC camp. Didn't throw up, unlike most of my fellow cadets. I think the intent was that we all should have done. :O

This was followed by a Varsity at RAF Locking in '61, and a VC10 in '65 to RAF Muharraq, Bahrain. Subsequent to this discovered that whenever I cut myself I could smell the avgas/avtur in the blood, and never looked back.:ok:

Mine was 8 hours in a B29 from Marham about 1952 with middlesbrough A.T.C.

A BEA DC-3 from Heathrow to Jersey circa 1958 ... think I was eleven at the time.
Then less than a year later a 3 minute flight in a Slingsby T31 at RAF Booker.
These childhood experiences got me really hooked on aviation and 50 years later I potter around the skies of New Zealand in my Tecnam Sierra and still get the same thrill.

An Auster from Lands End to St Marys in 1969 with me dad and his cousin who was flying.

A Dragonfly chopper (brand new from HMAS Albatross) in 1948 in Oz

First flight
 

Mine was in G-APAA, an Auster Alpine, a short pleasure flight out of Sandown IOW, must have been 1972 or 73.

An Avro Anson at HMS Peregrine, RNAS Ford 1955'ish with the RN Section of the School's Combined Cadet Force. We were made to wear parachutes and they had us running towards the aircraft, as one ran the parachute swung and hit the back of the knees. Fortunately none of us fell over. However the flight was magic and remains etched in one's memory.

Dragon Rapide, B of B day RAF Halton. Pilot smoking pipe in flight. Leading on to second flight 2 weeks later in Beverley as an ATC Cadet. Staff Cadet at 613 GS, Skydiver, PPL, pax on Concorde flight deck once. Vampire T.11 round Snowdonia. Not much piloting. LOTS of observing.etc,etc

:OMy first flight was also from Elstree in an Auster,G-AGXT,I had saved my pocket money.This aircraft had gained some notoriety having been used to dump a body over the Romney Marshes I think.This would been 1954 -55ish.I later had a 2nd flight in this aircraft,what mark was it?

The names Setty and Hume come to mind,although who murdered who and dumped the body I can't rememember.I later went on to fly in Ansons and a Devon from Bovingdon,gliding from Halton and Chipmunks from Abingdon and Cottesmore.One of the Anson trips was in the right hand seat and I can remember a Polish pilot and engine priming pumps in the cockpit.The Cottesmore flight was memorable as I'm sure the pilot was determined to make me use the sick bag.He didn't quite succeed!!

BEA Pionair, Wick to Orkney, 1961. T21 at Hawarden few months later. No looking back once bitten by the bug!

Dave

Dragon Rapide at Prestwick, 1958. Ten bob for 10 minutes, saved up for weeks and paid for it myself. Took a black and white snapshot of the a/c which still lives in my logbook on the "aircraft in which flown" page. I see it's £140 for a 40 minute flight from Duxford now which I reckon on a cost per minute is 70 times the 1957 price. It was either a bargain then or a rip-off now!

First flight was BAW BAC1-11 Manchester to Edinburgh circa 1973 followed by BIA Herald Blackpool to Manch a year later (also my first mid-air throw up!). First rotary was a Squirrel sight-seeing out of Monaco. First front seat was Musketeer G-ASWP(?) out of Barton.

Auster Workmaster G-APMJ, fifteen bob's worth of pleasure flight from Newcastle in Summer 1963 (I thought it might have been 1964 but I discover it crashed in Oct 63)

Second was a Sterling DC6 from Edinburgh to Copenhagen, student charter. Third was a BOAC 707 out of Heathrow, doing circuits and bumps at Bedford !

1. Dragon Rapide pleasure flight from Heathrow.

2. Anson from Northolt.

3. Chipmunk from White Waltham.

Kirby Cadet TX3 from 611 VGS, Swanton Morley 1966........
Hell, I'm getting old!:bored::bored::rolleyes:

Avro Anson, ATC camp, Colerne 1957. My wife's first was in a Bristol Freighter from Lydd on a family holiday. Later, whilst in the WJAC, she flew in an Auster at Hurn piloted by no less than Diana Barnato-Walker!

My first flight was JFK to SFO on an American Airlines DC10 back in the mid-70's...I was 12... This was at the end of a month long driving tour of the US. I'd never been on any kind of airline before so that DC10 looked HUGE! ;)

I remember dressing up for the flight in my best dark blue polyester slacks (remember when people dressed up for air travel?) and the Captain doing the PR walk through the cabin during the flight...

Mine was a Channel Airways Viscount from Southend to Rotterdam about 1966.

I also flew in GAPAA on a pleasure flight from Sandown in 1972.