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After a friend got her private license I was the first passenger to go up with her and it was in a Cessna 152. Eventually she went on to get her instructors license and I was her very first student. When I had somewhere around 50 hours flight time I took my first ride in a commercial aircraft and white knuckled the take off because I couldn't see what was going on and had no control. It also seemed to take forever before the pilot rotated and we got off the ground. After that I was fine.
In a few years that friend will be retiring from her career as an ATP. Might be kind of fun to be on her last commercial flight but she's flying international and it would be extremely complicated for me to get a passport. Maybe when she gets closer to retirement she will bid domestic for her last few months.
I also took a few lessons in gliders when I would go up to Calistoga for a weekend getaway and that was a small aircraft.
The smallest one I've ridden in was a Diamond DA-20 (Katana), a very small two-seater. My husband was doing some flight instruction on the side of his full-time job when we lived in Cleveland back in 1998, and he was asked to fly one back to the flight school from Ontario, Canada. We flew it across Lake Erie at night (almost felt like the equivalent of flying across a small ocean), and I was a bit nervous because it felt like we were in this glass bubble with wings with water all around us and no land in sight. You can see a picture of it here: Diamond DA 20 - Born To Fly
I've flown several 2-seaters, all about the same size. My first plane was a Cessna 140.
For commercial flights, years ago our scheduled flights out of town (350 miles to Denver) carried 6 passengers and a cooler of beer. The pilot, once at altitude, would announce on the intercom that there was beer in the back seat, and those wanting one could help themselves.
And while I never rode on it, I have a second cousin who flew a scheduled flight from Rapid City, SD to Gillette, WY to Billings, MT and back every day... flying a Grumman Tiger -- a small 4-place single engine plane with fixed gear. He flew mostly freight, but I think he also flew passengers. He was a retired USAF WWII pilot and ran a small flight school. I earned my instrument, commercial and multi-engine ratings from him.
I want to know: what plane was the smallest you had flown on?
An A-37 Cessna Dragonfly, as a military photographer/passenger. Nice view. This is the combat version of a T-37 Tweet trainer the USAF used.
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