This is a trip down memory lane.

First flight: CO2 SYD-GUAM-HNL-LAX on 23 Sep 1979 on a DC10.

They were the days of CO chickenfeed fares. For $300 I got a book of ten Visit USA paper tickets, valid for 30 days from that date, blank except for my name. I filled in the first standard-type nine tickets by hand with departure and arrival cities and could catch any domestic flight with an available seat. The tenth ticket entitled me to another book of tickets (as many as I could use). In the 30 days I flew on CO:

LAX-ORD-LAX
LAX-DEN-EWR-DEN-LAX (with DEN-EWR on the inaugural flight for the route)
LAX-DEN-EWR
EWR-DEN-SEA-DEN-ELP-DEN-EWR
EWR-DEN-SFO-DEN-EWR
EWR-DEN-LAX

After that I returned on CO1: LAX-HNL-SYD on 10 Nov.

This was before frequent flyer miles, but CO did hand out valuable transferable certificates on the DEN-EWR and EWR-DEN flights for the first month of that route.

I remember it all quite fondly.

First UA flight was UA603 ORD-MSP on 11 Oct 1981.

First UA frequent flyer miles on UA818 SYD-SFO on 18 Jul 1988.