That day, I was 19 and I was flying to New York for the first time. That left a lasting impression on me. I also had the opportunity to fly, when I was working as a young engineer at Air Inter, on the Dassault Mercure 100, which was an exceptional aircraft: at the time we still made test flights, to make sure that we had correctly corrected this or that problem during maintenance, before passengers took the plane. The Concorde left an impression on me too, but for different reasons: on the day I was due to board, I was working for Air France at the time, Bernard Attali, the group's CEO, called me : I was at the boarding gate but didn't get on board, in order to deal with an emergency... and I didn’t get again the chance to fly on that supersonic aircraft. On several occasions I went into the cabin, but I never flew in a Concorde! Do you have any bad memories of flying? I don't have any bad memories of flying. Like everyone else, I've had flights where the weather wasn't favourable. I've undoub- tedly experienced some bad flights, but I don't remember them. There were probably some, but that's all. My memory has sup- pressed them. Yannick Assouad is Executive Vice President, Avionics at Thales. . Yannick Assouad: My earliest memory of an aeroplane? I was a schoolgirl in Parthenay, in the Deux-Sèvres region, from a very modest background and top of my class. I was chosen by the Lion's Club as part of an exchange with the USA: I landed in Omaha, the capital of Nebraska. I was 16 and it was my first plane trip! I don't know if it was that trip that got me there, but flying aircrafts has always inspired me a lot. I've stayed in aeronautics my whole career. We first flew from Paris to New York with Pan Am Airways, in a Boeing 747. Then I can't remember the type of aircraft we used for the New York-Omaha flight: it was like a dream, I'd say. Later, I became an aeronautical engineer.
a magnificent flight in southern Africa, with the gauge at zero. A bad memory? A flight in Turkey with my husband, between Istanbul and Trebizond (Trabzon), a town on the shores of the Black Sea. A flight in a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737. You can't see anything, you're in the clouds. When we emerge, we're above the water but a long way from the runway. I can see straight away that this isn't going to work... and the pilot pulls back on the throttle! I'd worked it out! I'm starting to get stressed. The plane made a turn over land, but there was a lot of wind and it found itself far from the centre line of the runway again... and it went back on the throttle! When you're in the industry, you know the real risk of an accident at that point: the stress on the pilot, the stress in the cockpit. We finally landed on the third attempt. In my job, I'm used to aircraft, even small ones that move around a lot: that doesn't impress me. But this approach... it's one of the few times I've really been scared of flying.
Konstantinos Tsovilis is Founding Partner of the Goldair group of companies and Director of APG Greece.
Konstantinos Tsovilis: My father worked in the airline industry, so I was practically born in a plane. My first memory goes back to the age of 3-4. A domestic flight in Greece: imagine a steam bath... but instead of steam, it was cigarette smoke. Everyone smoked, even the pilots! Flying has always been an exciting experience for me. My father used to take me with him, ever since I was a child, and as the airlines had a lot of money at the time, they spoiled us. They gave us free business class tickets. The whole family travelled in business class. You can imagine how excited the kids were! It was wonderful. We often went to Eastern Europe, to Budapest and Prague, which were very popular tourist destinations for Greeks. My father represented both Malev and Czech Airlines. The best memory I have of a flight is when we went skiing in the Alps for the first time. We flew to Budapest, then took a coach to Austria. Our best friends came with us, and we practically filled business class on our own - that's two families. I remember not being able to sleep the night before, I was so excited! When we arrived, everything was covered with snow, as you can ima- gine. We had feasts, my parents drank champagne and wine. It was a fantastic time and I'm nostalgic for those days, when flying was a source of pleasure for me.
Yannick Assouad
My best memories of flying? It was when we went on family holidays, when the children were still at home. And then there's one that holds a special place in my memory, a little flight in Botswana, with a private pilot. My son, who was also a pilot, sat in the front seat and noticed just before take-off that the fuel gauge was at zero. He pointed this out to the other pilot, who pulled out a wet stick from under his seat, telling him that the gauge had broken down but that he had checked the level. It was
Michel Monvoisin is President and CEO of Air Tahiti Nui.
Michel Monvoisin: I don't remember my first flight. I was a baby and my parents took me to live with them in Rabat, Morocco. However, when we left Morocco to live in French Polynesia, I remember well. It was a long journey, by Caravelle to Paris, then by DC-8 from Paris to Los Angeles, with a technical stopover in Montreal. And then in a DC-10, with UTA: I particularly remem- ber this fine airline. And then Air Polynésie's Fokker-F27s, to fly to the islands - I often went to Huahine, my parents lived on the islands; this was before the arrival of the ATRs. The plane was essential to the development of French Polynesia, and there was no university at this time : all the high school students left
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