You Never Forget Your First...

[Protocol Penguin]

My first time on an aeroplane was just before my dad starting learning to fly, and also before we'd had a family holiday involving air travel. I was going to tag along with one of my dad's work colleagues taking a test flight on a weekend, who was co-piloting with a professional airline pilot. However, it wasn't a simple flight, unbeknown to my dad it was a drill flight involving simulated engine failures and emergency landings, presumably practice for whoever's next regular flight test. It was very choppy and stomach-churning, an unforgettable first flight. As 'compensation' for the unexpected experience, my dad took me to the recently-opened Game the following weekend to buy a Super NES game of my choice, so perhaps it wasn't so bad?

[Neon Ignition]

A kid of around, probably, 5 or 6. A one hour flight in December that took off from Manchester and essentially did a low altitude loop that I recall involved passing over Blackpool tower. It was timed for Christmas and someone dressed as Santa came around and passed presents out to all the kids mid-way through the flight. I'd next be on a plane about 15 years later.

[briareos_kerensky]

At the young age of 31, on an A320 from Milan to Heathrow, and shortly after on a 747 from London to Narita.
I want to fly on a 747 again.

[Mayhem]

First foreign holiday we had as a family, to Majorca shortly before my 8th birthday. Lots of swimming, playing, earning 250 peseta coins out of the fruity in the hotel to fund playing the Scramble machine next to it, and being told by the locals I was pretty good at French boules for someone my age.

[Hirst]

As mentioned earlier, Dan Air 727 Trijet to Greece. Got to go in the cockpit and everything, an experience sadly denied post 9/11.

Missus only went on one last year though, Qatar A380-800 to Doha (then Qatar 777-300ER to Bangkok). Must be like night and day in comparison, I don’t think my first flight even had a shared in-flight screen. Getting a magazine from WH Smith to read on the plane was a require part of the experience then.

Flying on planes is one of the few experiences in life where I still maintain some form of childlike wonderment that hasn’t yet managed to be crushed out of my soul like everything else. Give me a window seat, an in-flight meal and a set of those weird 2-to-1 adaptors so I can use my own headphones and I’m happy. Admittedly after 6 hours or so, slightly weary.

[Asura]

First foreign holiday we had as a family, to Majorca shortly before my 8th birthday. Lots of swimming, playing, earning 250 peseta coins out of the fruity in the hotel to fund playing the Scramble machine next to it, and being told by the locals I was pretty good at French boules for someone my age.

This is basically my story too. Not sure of the exact destination but it'll have been Majorca, or the Costa Brava, and the machine was Knights of the Round.

[Anpanman]

First flight I was sixteen 02/08/81 LHR-MAN on a BA Trident 3 G-AWZK, which oddly is at the viewing park at MAN.
Cost £20 one way standby, the flight was like getting on a bus, BA's service at the time was notoriously bad. We were sat somewhere near the back smoking our heads off. As well as collecting some numbers at LHR we spent some quality time in the fantastic arcade they had on the Queens Building, had my first experience of Defender which compared to everything else I'd played was akin to a legal high.

At the young age of 31, on an A320 from Milan to Heathrow, and shortly after on a 747 from London to Narita.
I want to fly on a 747 again.

Ah yes the queen of the skies, I've been really lucky to fly on a few, Malaysian, BA, Garuda, Thai, Air China, Cathay, Lufthansa, KLM, Asiana - all 400's plus a KLM Combi and an All Nippon SR, the special Japan only version with the ultra high density seats.
Really want to add a series 800 to the list, Lufty currently put them into Haneda from Frankfurt.

Hope you get on one before they disappear.

[briareos_kerensky]

Really want to add a series 800 to the list, Lufty currently put them into Haneda from Frankfurt.
Hope you get on one before they disappear.

Oooh nice, didn't know that, I thought they were back on other routes. Hope they're still there in 2025.

[Neon Ignition]

You Never Forget Your First...

Brush with Death

[Lebowski]

On my way to college in Leed's, via train had my headphones in, listening to Prodigy's new album Fat of the land so must be sometime around 1997, the Bass was kicking then all of a sudden their was this almighty bang and the train starts shaking, i look over to see mud and debris hit the side of the train and some of the windows crack, people are out of their seats and at the doors. The train jerks into the station and there is a mad scrum to get off the train, I didn't have a clue what had happened but they are evacuating the train station and people are running for the exits. I'm Still thinking what the hell just happened.

The news that night was interesting a signal box just outside Leeds train station had been rigged up with explosives to go off as a train went over a switch on the track, the vibration from our train caused it to trigger early though, as we where on the track next to the switch. The real IRA where taking credit, and the entire rail network is in chaos as nothing can come into or go though Leeds as its in complete shut down. It was quite surreal seeing a reconstruction of the incident, it turns out that if we had come in on the track to the left of us it would of knocked the train onto its side and done a lot more damage to the train which was the real intended outcome.

[Dogg Thang]

The thing about my first brush with death is that, at the time, I didn’t even consider it a brush with death - we think we’re immortal as kids. It’s something where the memory of it came back to me in my twenties and it filled me with a genuine sense of fear and panic that I should have been feeling back when it happened. It’s like it took many years for me to actually feel the reaction. And even now I get the shivers thinking about it.

I was maybe 12 or so, not exactly sure but around that age, and I was climbing trees with a bunch of mates. And at the time I didn’t have much fear of heights. I was climbing a tree and up reasonably high - not high enough that a fall would kill me but one that would hurt pretty bad when I hit the ground. And sure enough, that happened. I slipped and fell. I was close enough to the trunk to try to grab it on the way down which probably slowed my descent a bit but, when I hit the bottom, landing on my feet, I landed on a broken part of the tree (or a second tree growing in the same place, not sure) that was basically like a stake sticking up from the ground. It was really sharp and tore through my trouser leg, grazing all up my inner thigh and crotch and coming out the inside of the trousers to graze up my abdomen.

Took some acrobatics to get out of that without cutting my trousers off but I did it and scrambled off and headed home with just some stinging grazes and sore feet and legs from the impact and thought no more about it.

Until I got flashbacks years later and realised that, just a centimetre or two another direction and I would have been impaled. And it still haunts me.

[Blobcat]

I was crossing a road in a residential area near where I lived between 2 parked cars when I was around 9-10 years old. Thinking back it's weird as it's nigh on impossible to park on that part of the road/ no one ever does so I assume there was a funeral or some mass party forcing people to almost park on the green it was next to.

I was about to cross and didn't really look both ways when I hear a kid shout "oi look out" and just then a car driving way too fast nearly hit me and it would have if I hadn't have stopped. This road was almost always dead as well as hard to speed in so rarely a risk but I do remember that was one of the only times I was careless to not look before crossing (I think the parked cars distracted me).

I'm sure many people have had dumb moments happen like that a few times in their lives and they have forgotten about it but the thing that made me remember it was the kid that shouted out was a brat that used to bully me for a short while one summer a few years back. I waved thanks and he just nodded and that was the last time I saw him as I moved a year later.

He was the kid that insisted the trees/ bushes in the park area closest to his house were 'his' so the summer we made a den in a 'cave' inside a bushy area near his supposed house as many of us kids were convinced he didn't live there. He was a bit of a brute but was mostly all talk and no trousers. The one time he tried to physically hurt one of us my sister pushed him over and he cried and ran home cause he landed on his bum.

[Neon Ignition]

Similarly, I was around 8 and in town with my parents and grandparents. My parents crossed the three laned main road ahead of us and I went to cross as well, I went between the nearside cars that were clogged up in traffic as the second I hit the white lines I heard my parents shouting at me to stop as a blue car appeared out of nowhere at speed. I just about managed to stop mid-run and I remember balancing myself to stop leaning forward as the car passed inches away from my face, the main memory being the guy driving looking straight at me as he went by grinning at me. Quickest way I ever learnt to check the traffic in future.

[wakka]

When I was a kid we visited Bournemouth beach once. I was probably about 8 or 9.

I had a new pair of goggles that made me feel like I was one of the Snorks, so I went swimming out into the sea while my Mum and sister chatted on the beach.

I swam out a long way, past all of the other daytrippers larking out about in the shallows, following the line of the pebbledash breakwater till there was no one else around. I suddenly felt worried and looked back. The beach looked very far away and the sound of people enjoying themselves on the beach was drowned out about the noise of the waves crashing over me.

I started to try and swim back but as hard as I kicked, I couldn't make any headway. I was caught in a current and being pushed backwards, further out to sea.

I kicked and pushed over to the breakwater and clung onto it as best I could, but it was wet and slippery and the pebbledash cut into my hands and feet. I was much too small to climb up it.

I clung that for a while, feeling tireder and tireder, just trying to concentrate on holding on.

Then I felt a pair of arms grab me, hauling me away from the breakwater and diving back through the water towards the beach. It felt like only seconds until we were back in the shallows with the rest of the beachgoers, surrounded by the commotion of laughter and splashing.

A pair of hairy arms released me and their owner asked me where my parents here. He led me back to my Mum and she thanked him - I don't think she had realised I was gone - and that's all I can remember.

If it hadn't been for that good Samaritan I think I might have been washed away.

[Neon Ignition]

You Never Forget Your First...

Forgotten Drunken Night