My first flight was on Midway Airlines from JFK to Midway Airport in Chicago, going to college. I was thrilled just to be flying.
MAGA!!!
I flew them. Flew in Lockheed Constellations, the civvie version of the c97 (Boeing 377 Stratocruiser), old navy C-47, etc.
What I’d really like is a trip aboard a replica China Clipper....
PanAm (charter, I presume) flew me home from Vietnam.
I was happy to see the logo on Kubrick’s hypersonic
scramjet orbital flyer, and I was sad to learn when
PanAm stopped.
My grandfather was a machinist/welder for Pan Am after the war. I went to work in the same hanger after Pan Am went out of business
1972, TWA, 747, NY to Germany.
Pan Am was killed by their unions, with complicity by management.
Management SHOULD have told the unions to either moderate their demands, or they would dissolve the company. But that would have put management out of work too.
So they would just sell assets and lease them back, until there was nothing left.
I thought they went out of business several years ago.
My first flight....
Northeast Airlines, New York / La Guardia to Boston and, after a short time at Logan, the flight continued on to Bangor, Maine....my father and I. I think it was a DC-9.
Northeast Airlines was acquired by Delta in 1972.
My first flight on an airliner was in 1980 from San Francisco to Anchorage with a stopover in Seattle on a Boeing 727. I was a teenager and traveled alone. I spent the summer in Anchorage with my uncle, aunt, and cousin. We visited Mount McKinley, Kenai, and Soldotna and ate fresh salmon.
My first flight in any plane was in 1975 when my Dad’s flight instructor took me for a ride in a Citabria. My Dad was working on his private license.
Where I grew up on Long Island, there was a man who lived down the road on four acres. He and his wife had horses.
He was a pilot for Pan Am and was one of the first pilots to fly the 747 across the Atlantic from JFK.
In 1970, Middle Eastern terrorists, on the same day, hijacked a number of flights heading from Europe to New York. The airlines involved were Swissair, BOAC (the predecessor to British Airways), TWA, and a Pan Am 747.
All of the aircraft were flown to an airstrip in Egypt, where all four aircraft were blown up. At least the bad guys allowed the passengers and crew to go down the emergency slides first.
Shortly after that, the airlines starting using air marshals on their European routes.
Not long after that, my father crossed paths with this Pan Am pilot at the base of our driveway as they were driving past. He and his wife were chatting with my dad. The subject of the recent hijackings came up.
The Pan Am pilot said, “They better not try to fuc-—g hijack me, I have a fuc-—g gun in the cockpit!”
The pilot’s wife said, “Ed, what about the fuselage?”
He responded, “F-— the fuselage!”
Speaking of his wife, as I mentioned she and her husband had horses.
My father told me that once at a neighborhood New Year’s Eve party, the pilot’s wife rode one of their horses up and down the road buck naked like Lady Godiva!
When my father told me that story, I said to him, “You were a lifelong photographer. You couldn’t have taken some pictures?”
And, this thread also discusses first flights, and mine was on a United Convair cv_240. Just a kid, it was 1954, and I loved every bump and wiggle (known as "air pockets" at the time) of the flight. Other passengers? Many were airsick.
I knew a Linda Foster who was one of the first round the world Pan Am flight attendants back in the early 70’s. She had fond memories of that job.
I realize that this is just a travel publication but still any standard of accuracy would cause one to state that PanAm remains dead as a doornail, and this trip is per a licensing of the brand. Doesn’t take away from the fact this sounds pretty remarkable, but it needed to be mentioned
Looks cool. It kind of is a return to Pan Am’s roots. Travel in the 30s, 40s, even 50s was really only for the rich. If you look at any documentaries about it, the food and service were great. People dressed very nicely and it looked great. But tickets were the equivalent of $10,000 or more so hardly anybody who was even middle class flew. That really started to change in the 1960s with bigger jets like the 707.
my first flight was on a PSA 727 from burbank to san diego in 1968.