Of My Air Travels
December 2, 2009
My first ever flight was in 1959. The circumstances were not so happy, though, as we were going from Seattle to Washington, D.C., due to the fact that my mom’s father had suffered a stroke. It was aboard a Northwest Orient Airlines DC-7C. I remember looking forward to that flight with eager anticipation, as my dad had made a calendar with a hand-drawn picture of an airplane taking off in the square that represented the date of the flight. I crossed off each day on the calendar as I went to bed each night.
My only recollections of that flight were that I enjoyed looking out the window at everything and that I always got a window seat. I do not remember how long the flight took, how many segments it consisted of, or if we changed planes anywhere along the way. I also can’t remember what meals were served or if there was more than one stewardess. I don’t recall visiting the cockpit, either.
My second flight came about a year later when we moved from Arlington, VA to Hawaii. We flew from Baltimore to Los Angeles aboard an American Airlines Boeing 707. I’m reasonably certain that I had a window seat for that flight, too. I distinctly remember being catered to by the stewardesses, as we were four kids traveling “unattended.” I recall being given chewing gum to alleviate the popping of the ears and playing cards with the AA logo on them as well as Junior Pilot wings.
I didn’t fly again until we left Hawaii and commenced my first trip around the world. After sailing to Japan on a military transport, we traveled via many carriers including Lufthansa, Pan American, Air India, Middle East Airlines, Olympic Airlines and TWA. I think I had window seats on all of them. I also recall never being without anything I wished for (and often things I didn’t) on those flights, be it a soft drink or some juice or a snack or a coloring book and some crayons or some other diversion to help get a ten year old through a flight. And that’s not counting the stuff my parents brought along for us.
After that, I pretty much didn’t fly anymore until I became an adult. For two years, I would travel between my home in Raleigh and school in New York at least a couple of times per year. Those trips were all on Eastern except one when I came home on leave from Ft. Knox and rode Piedmont. I was flying military standby on most of those flights and, even though I was paying half-fare, you couldn’t tell it by the royal treatment I received on every one of those flights.
In my mid twenties, I began flying in earnest. This was my “go to Europe as often as possible” era. It was also the first time in my life that I was paying my own way entirely. For that reason, I began to pay attention to all the finer points of selecting an air carrier, not the least of which was the price. In fact, if I do say so myself, I got pretty danged good at finding the best bargain… meaning the cheapest available flight. Remember, there was no Internet then and you got all your information from and did your booking through either a travel agent (my preferred method) or with the airline directly. I used both methods about equally and I found that travel agents were more inclined to find you lower fares once they knew that you might be traveling again (and again) in a relatively short period of time. The airlines, at the time, didn’t particularly care which method was used and made you feel welcome to be aboard regardless. I can honestly say that of all the different airlines I used to get to Europe and back, they were pretty well neck and neck insofar as service was concerned… they were all pretty good. That opinion stayed with me for all the other air travel I did in the early portion of my professional career and later on when I began to travel with a family of my own. It’s been only relatively recently that my enjoyment of flying has dwindled, and it has faded exponentially in the last eight years. Reasons coming up.
