Classic Video of Pan Am Boeing 747-100 Inside and Out

As a travel agent’s kid in Menlo Park (on the SF peninsula), I remember being taken on family trips out of all of the Bay Area’s major airports. But my first flight on a 747 didn’t come until the Summer before 7th grade on a family trip to Europe. Dad probably found some great fares. Mom took my brother on a DC-10 charter that stopped a bazillion times before reaching Amsterdam. Dad and I departed from SFO on a 707 to JFK, and then on my first 747 flight to Paris, then transferring to a Caravelle for the last hop to Amsterdam. I was very impressed with the 747. (A family trip to Brazil in 2nd grade had already inspired me to read up on how jet engines work. So I was beginning to earn my AvGeek credentials at a young age.

But nothing even today compares with the flight home from that trip. While Mom and my brother took the same DC-10 charter back to Oakland, Dad and I went via London, which a little time for sightseeing, and then on a British Airways 747 for the nonstop to SFO. On the flight, Dad knew they’d take kids up to see the flight deck, and asked a flight attendant to arrange it. When it was my turn, they took me upstairs to the flight deck. The left seat was empty – thanks to the British custom of afternoon tea. The first officer motioned to it and said, “Have a seat. But don’t touch anything.” I said something indicating I understood, and sat in the captain’s seat of the 747. I still remember the view clearly. I wasn’t tall enough to see well over the instrument panel – but the view was ice mountains of Greenland. The instruments seemed overwhelming at the time, though I made an effort to look at most of them. The First Officer said we had reached a checkpoint where he was going to enter some numbers in the center console. He typed on the console. Then the autopilot turned the yoke in front of me as the plane made a gentle turn to its next flight segment. (I have since come to understand that meant in 1978 even 747’s were still navigating across the Atlantic by Lindbergh’s method of breaking the great circle route into line segments at a computed heading. It was still a few years before computers would smooth those out into a continuous great circle path.) Then the captain returned and wanted his seat.

If you want to know the advantage you can give a kid from inspiring them, I was an example. From that point, I knew I would be a pilot. 10 years later, minus one day, I was a college student making my first solo flight in a Cessna 150. Today I’ve taken that dream far enough to share it – as a certified flight instructor, I help people with that same dream of flight to become pilots.

If anyone can find out who was first officer on the British Airways nonstop from LHR to SFO on July 8, 1978, I never found a way to say thank you.