bill wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 6:01 pm
1973 on BEA Trident 1 to LHR,on my way to Italy.Loved the acceleration and take off and then the descent into LHR but found everything else in between boring.Almost 50 years later I still feel the same.
Airline flying is very much a means to an end, getting somewhere quickly. Some airlines make that a relatively pleasant experience, others are not quite at that stage. Unfortunately the stampede to low costs has driven a lot of the differentiators out the industry, making the difference between BA and Easyjet, for example, minimal.
What really gave me the bug was flying with the RAF at Summer ATC camp, and at Turnhouse, the half-hour Chipmunk trips two or three times a year with hands on control really sold me on flying as an activity, which for me was over 40 years of fun. Such memorable things as flying over Germany at 500 feet in a Wessex with the door open, or map reading at 5000' from the navigator bay underneath a Varsity, and circuit bashing at Brize Norton in a VC10, were absolutely addictive.
So, I can cope with a winged bus as a means of transport, but real flying can really be a blast.