Tell us about your flying memories and WIN a camera
Anyone fancy winning a camera? Well in all honestly I could do with winning one myself after recently breaking mine… again… *accident prone!*
…But instead I have teamed up with Flying 100 Years to give away a camera as part of their 100 Years of Flying celebrations.
Can you believe we have been flying commercially for 100 years this year. A hundred years seems so far in the ‘olden’ days it is a surprise we had planes at all back then! But we did and how plane travel has changed over the years! Sometimes for the best and sometimes perhaps not. I have certainly been on my fair share of world flights and can’t quite imagine a world without flight. The places I have seen, the people I have met, so much of it would not be possible without commercial flying.
I’ve even become somewhat of an #avgeek recently, having been on a press trip with Flybe and flying to Finland with Finnair just to see the new A350 land on its launch journey across the world. A new plane that is 20% more fuel efficient, which I hope is a step towards more environmentally friendly air travel.
To top off my new geeky plane ways I also saw two Lancaster bombers flying overhead in Lincoln on Vera’s route home last week. Probably the last time they will fly together and a beautiful moment. Especially seen as my Grandpa worked on the engines for Lancaster Bombers in Canada during the war. My mum was in tears when I told her what I had seen. History in the making!
We have a lot to thank plane travel for.
So I think flying is something to be celebrated and to help celebrate I am giving one lucky reader the chance to win a camera to help capture more memories from your travels abroad.
To be in with a chance of winning all you have to do is answer the question below in the comments of this post.
where is your best or worst flying memory?
Often the worst memories are as good as the best. Did you get to meet the Captain? Get upgraded to business class? Delayed flight and missed your layover? We want to hear your fun and crazy flight stories, we all have them!
Mine had to be a flight to the USA via France where I was sat at the back next to a particularly French French lady, who every time the toilet door, behind us, opened she would go ‘oo la laaa’ as she made the smelly signal moving her hand across her nose. It was rather annoying but also particularly funny and the flight certainly went down in history where for once I didn’t actually get to sleep on a flight.
For extra chances to win you can share this contest on Twitter or give She Gets Around a like on Facebook or Twitter. (every entry is one more chance to win!)
The camera is the Canon IXUS 265 compact digital camera, which is super versatile, has a 12x Optical Zoom, WiFi/NFC connectivity and full HD video so you can make videos about your travels too! Perfect little spare camera if you already have a big fancy camera.
This competition is now closed! Congratulations to Laura Tinker who won the camera. Yay!
The contest is open to UK residents aged 18 and over and will close at midnight on Sunday 12th October 2014. A winner be picked at random and notified via email by the 14th October.
Don’t forget to check out the Flying 100 website to read lots of exciting stories about flying over the last 100 years.
Good luck and I look forward to reading your entries.
I remember flying home from Germany after spending a summer working in Munich and getting stuck next to the worst passenger. He spent the entire flight either holding onto the seat so hard his knuckles turned white or doing the rosary. Turns out he was pretty scared of flying ✈
Fantastic flypast of 2 Lancasters recently – brought back memories, especially for my Dad. Once flew to northern France. Travelling across the tarmac to depart, the planes were becoming smaller in size until we reached a very small one. Seemed disconcerting at first but turned out to be brilliant flight.
I saw the two Lancasters too. Amazing moment!
taking off in a thunderstorm from Manchester to turkey on take off we hit bad airpockets worst flight ever scared for life x
First off, oops for not following you on Twitter… What was an amazing trip, meeting the in laws for the first time and seeing the states for the first time too ended with public humiliation at work.
Too much food (I think, and probably booze too), and not enough fibre on my first US trip meant I was in crippling stomach pain for the entire 7 hour flight back from Chicago.
I tried drinking myself to sleep with mini bottles of red wine (god bless generous air stewards), needless to say it didn’t work – yet. Stupidly I hadn’t booked the next day off, arriving at work after a speedy shower less than an hour after landing, still very drunk, and still in serious pain.
My day ended with the managing director, flanked by the company’s biggest client, tapping me on the shoulder to tell me I “ought to find somewhere else to sleep”, having conked out, snoring my head off in one of the company’s meeting rooms.
And I kept my job. The end.
I remember taking an internal flight in Indonesisa – island hopping from Sumba to Sumbawa and it was a small (around 20 seat) plane. There was a restriction on the weight of luggage that we could check in the hold so in the blazing sun we checked in wearing about 4 layers of clothes, pockets crammed and adorned with accessories such as cameras and carrying books!
my sons first flight last year when he was 10 was so funny as the plane was taking off he had me covering his eyes whilst he was hyper ventilating into the sick bag i know its bad but i couldn’t stop laughing luckily he got over it
I’ve never been lucky enough to fly, I’m hoping I will one day xxx
Luckily I haven’t had any bad experiences of flying. My most scary was the first time I flew alone without anyone I knew….I went out to work as a Thomson’s holiday rep on the island of Menorca during my first Summer of Uni. It was scary sitting on my own but once I got in the air, I was full of excitement! I loved my first Summer working as a rep and did it for the following two Summers! best job of my life – being a holiday rep yeah!
I actually really like flying, I just don’t like so many other people being on the plane.
A few years ago I flew home alone from Thailand, I ended up being in the air for 22 hours in total (for various issues with landing, fueling etc) it was traumatic to say the least. I ended up having a few too many little bottles of red wine, and started to doze off. I was sat next to a rather pleasant South African man with a pale blue shift one … I’d clearly been asleep a while and done the ‘lean’, When I woke up I’d dribbled red spit onto his pale blue shoulder. He was lovely about it, but I was absolutely mortified!
My parents moved to Spain and I went to visit so I flew alone, just happened to be one of the worse storms to hit Spain in something like 100 years, it was so bumpy people were crying, calling home thinking the plane was gonna crash .. the lights kept going out and the oxygen masks fells down… got to be the most scary thing i’ve ever endured
We flew to Edinburgh so only a short flight but it played havoc with my ears. Very very painful. I was glad to get off at the other end!
My worst experience of flying didn’t actually involve boarding a plane! We were trying to get home to Wales from Dublin (where we lived at the time) for Christmas on the 23rd December. There had been a lot of snow that year (2010), and we were sat in a pub in departures, when we just happened to notice a TV screen in the corner showing teletext news saying that all flights out of Dublin airport had been cancelled… but absolutely no other communication saying this! So we were a bit unsure for a while, but then everyone started heading for the exits en masse. In the baggage hall, there was pandemonium as bags were just stacked up all over the place, so we spent hours desperately trying to find ours amongst the hoards of people and identical cases, whilst on the phone to my Dad who rushed to buy some of the last ferry tickets available for the next morning (by the time we got home later that evening, every ferry booked up). When we eventually retrieved ours, we left the airport only to find there were no buses running, and the whole airport worth of people were queuing for taxis. It was about midnight by now, but thankfully we made a desperate call to a friend with a car, who came through the snow to collect us and take us home. The next morning we got up at 4.30am in order to get our ferry to Holyhead, and then had to get multiple trains with our big cases and bags all the way across Wales (absolutely beautiful scenery thankfully!) to Cardiff, but thankfully we got home late on Christmas eve.
flying back from thailand with no tv, a broken cocsyx and an awful woman sitting next to me who wouldnt move when i needed the toilet
on a trip to south africa visiting the inlaws really bad turbulance scared the laving daylights out of me especially when the crew had to sit down and seat belt!
My worst was the first time flying abroad with my partner. He had kept it from me that he was terrified of flying and boy was I in for a shock. He basically didn’t talk or move the entire flight. He was sweating, struggling to breathe, the works!
I’m actually pretty scared of flying, although have got better over the years. My worst flying story was when my sister (who wanted to be a pilot) requested we go in the cockpit. I spent the trip pinned to the back wall absolutely terrified, and then as we went to land, all the lights went off. i screamed thinking the plane was going down and clutched at my dads arm who laughed and told me thats what always happened when a plane landed at night. thanks for the heads up!
“We have a lot to thank plane travel for.” – so true! & Yet it’s amazing how much I take it for granted!
My best flight ever was on the way from Morocco sat next to a Turkish guy who, when I started raving about Moroccan mint tea, proceeded to write me long ingredient lists & recipes for Turkish tea, insisting it would be better. He was right; I haven’t been to Turkey yet but I can’t get enough of his tea!
Worst was definitely going to Chicago a couple of years ago – Very bad turbulence for 10 minutes where it felt like the plane was being tossed around for fun! Very scary!
I’m not a good flyer. I’m always slightly nervous while I’m in the air and very glad when I land. Once, when I was on a flight from Italy, the plane hit some bad turbulence. It felt like it was shaking from side to side & was a very scary experience. However, it wasn’t all bad. During the flight, I was sat next to a woman who’d been quietly sitting reading her book. When the flight got rough, I guess I must’ve looked petrified because she put her book down and began talking to me. She was very reassuring and helped me calm down. She chatted away to me for the rest of the flight until we landed. I was very glad I’d been sat next to someone so kind. So, it was sort of a bad experience, but it was a nice one too 🙂
Awesome prize!
Best memory was a business class upgrade on a flight home from LA after we agreed to stay overnight when our flight was overbooked. It was lovely getting the chance to eat using actual plates, oh, and the seats were so much better! 🙂
The worst was the following year, flying home from NYC and a guy had a heart attack, it was pretty distressing but luckily we had trained medics onboard that managed to stabilize him.
🙂
All of my experiences of flying have been positive so far – i love the excitement of flying and of knowing that you’re going to a new place. Especially when you get a window seat so you can watch as you take off/land.
My worst flight was a little one-hour hop from Auckland to Wellington in NZ when I was 11 on a school-trip. Not only does Wellington have cross-winds and a notoriously short runway, but we were in a smaller than usual plane, in a storm, and ended up landing pretty much on one wheel before bouncing down and in! There were a lot of unhappy stomachs on that flight.
I haven’t been upgraded yet so my best flight is currently updated every time I get to go somewhere new 😀
The best flight is any one going home to New Zealand, and worst has to be the ones coming away!
Best memory is the first time I got an upgrade when I was flying alone to Australia!!
Worst was being stuck on the plane waiting to take off in Dubai as we circled around the runway for ages. It was 40 degrees outside and I thought I was going to be roasted alive!
The first time I ever flew was when I emigrated to South Africa with my parents when I was 14, in the ’70’s. We flew with SAA, and it was a long flight, perhaps 10-12 hours. Everything was very strange and exciting. My mum was terrified (her first flight too!), and it was “my job” to be very brave and jolly mum along! We got invited up to the flight cabin, and chatted to the Captain, which settled her down a bit, but my strongest memory is of my first in-flight meal. To this day I am charmed and amused by all the specially-designed little bits of gubbins, but it was like playing with a new dolls house toy for me on that first flight. My starter was a fillet of poached salmon (common and nothing special now, but as a working-class child in 1974, the only salmon I had ever seen came out of a tin on a Sunday, doused in vinegar!!), garnished, I thought, with a lovely shiny black grape, which I eagerly popped into my mouth … And just as eagerly spat back out again: instead of a lovely sweet fruit, it was a disgusting, salty, nasty-textured thing – ugh!! It was a black olive, of course, but I hadn’t ever seen one of those up close and personal before either. I didn’t again for many years, either, although these days I love them!
My happiest memory would be taking my Dad for afternoon tea for his 70th birthday at Goodwood Aerodrome. There was no tea but instead I surprised him with a flight in a four seater plane over the coast of Sussex where we live. Mum said she waved a tea towel at us as we flew over but we didn’t see her. Lovely views and a lovely memory of time well spent with my Dad.
my first ever long haul flight was to the Dom Rep, and i was sick as a dog! i was a major wimp, and spent longer in the toilet than in my seat!
My worst was when I was about 7 years old and we flew to Spain in a thunderstorm,I can still remember clearly all the lightning and torrential rain.My best was the flying lesson I bought for my husband for his birthday once and we went to watch him.He loved it!
worst was last month, being on a plane and being told we had to turn back (at 35,000 feet) because “there is a problem with the plane” It was horrible 🙁 x
Gutted to see that I missed the boat with this competition, but so pleased to see that my friend won it 🙂
I have had a few good and a few bad flying experiences, one of the best had to be being upgraded to first class on a BA flight – I ended up feeling guilty though and not taking full advantage of the on flight goodies, but I did get an amazing nights sleep all the way to India 🙂
The worst flight is a toss up between an electrical storm in Sydney, which the plane was being thrown around like a toy or flying in Thailand after a pretty horrific car crash 10 mins before reaching the airport…
http://www.hikinginheels.co.uk