60 years flying with BA!
 

Next month will be 60 years since I took my first BEA flight from Heathrow to Belfast (aged 5, if you were wondering) on, I would imagine, a Viscount. How the years have passed on all sorts of aircraft around the world in all sorts of classes and all sorts of seats. Certainly amongst the lifetime of memories have been some fantastic crew to make it all worthwhile.

Always tried to follow the Alan Whicker (met him once on a flight to JER, of course) advice: drink as much as you are able and eat everything they put in front of you. Bit testing these days, I suppose.

I probably need to keep flying another 60 years, though, to get Gold for Life :)

I can beat that, just - memory is very dim (I was 6 in 1957) but I think this is broadly correct. Having gone to Canada by Cunard White Star in 1955, we flew back in 1957 for long leave halfway through my father's tour in Montreal being a diplomat. It would have been on a Britannia turbo-prop which kept stopping to refuel of course. We returned to Canada by sea so my next flight was the final homeward-bound in 1959 or early 1960 - I recall it should have been on a Comet 4 but that was replaced at the last minute by another Britannia.

I am a comparative youngster. My first flight on a BEA Viscount was only 54 years ago, MAN-LHR.

One of my school friends father was a BEA Viscount captain. He flew MAN-BFS-MAN-BFS-MAN 3 days a week. Ah, the good old days.

Some here may think that I served beef tea to the Wright Brothers. It is not true. My first BA flight was aboard a Vickers Vanguard LHR - LBG ( Le Bourget) on Wednesday 1sgt August 1962. My age? I was as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.

In truth, I was really quite young

And you still are young, lovely and very charming! Oops.. I forgot to mention entertaining too!

I did MAN-LHR in a Vanguard in1966. Did you ever venture to the frozen north?

I can only claim 49 years. LHR/GRO return in a BEA Vanguard. And then skip on to 1976 for my first BA flight, GLA/SOU in a Viscount.

So at what age did you acquire the hair brush ?:D

Time to rebrand this site pensionertalk?

MAN-ORY a few times in the mid-1960s. No idea what equipment. As a student I could distinguish the nose from the tail but that's as far as my curiosity extended, being more interested in the stewardesses.* And, on arrival, the Parisiennes. Happy days thanks to BEA.

* stewardess: noun (arch.) - female flight attendant on aeroplane.

My first was the 22nd of August 2000 (aged 6 months :D) on a 767-300ER, G-BZHA to Nice.

Funnily enough flew on that very aircraft as my last BA 767 flight to LCA just weeks before its retirement in October 2018. Think the cabin was the same age 18 years later!!! ^