In what plane did you first fly?

You went to Réunion Island ? my stepdad is from there and invited us twice. I loved the little place and long to return there. And yes, Réunion island is a full blown french department as much as Creuse or Landes or Rhones-Alpes. So domestic flight. Blame the old french empire ! And you are lucky not having flown to Nouméa, french Pacific overseas territories. Another domestic flight, except twice as long: almost a full and entire day spent in the plane. I think its the longuest domestic flight in the world !
Then again, French pilots regullarly do the same flight in a Rafale, and no way to go supersonic to cut transit time, because the A330MRTT couldn't catch up...

Weirdest is an A330-200 between Réunion and Mauritius (a flight which takes all of 25 minutes). If you think an A330 for a scheduled 230km trip is a bit much, Air Austral frequently uses B777-300ERs on the same route - plane's longer than the flight distance FFS!

Yup. For french airlines, servicing french overseas territories can be a very unprofitable headache. Réunion Island and the few french islands nearby are kinda at the bottom of the world, corner of no and where. It's like New Zealand, except poorer, with fewer people, and domestic. And no Australia nearby. Madascar, India, SE-Asia are far, far, far away...

Air France has a public service obligation of flying there, they have no choice. Others airlines - private - tried to compete but its a lose-lose game. Air Austral is doing a good job, but others have thrown the towel.

Also consider the fact that outside Paris, only Lyon and Marseille have direct flights to Saint Denis de la Réunion. And since I live in Bordeaux, I 'm screwed whichever of the three I pick: all three are exactly 600 km away - north, east, south-east. No luck, really. So its TGV or feeder flight. Except feeder flights from Bordeaux to Paris have been nixed, because TGV can do the job with zero carbon emissions (nuclear-electric train, baby.).

Réunion Island youth face a 30% unemployement rate, so they have to exile to metropolitan France. They face expensive flights (1200 euros average), Paris only, by night. And when winter comes in CDG or Orly, they almost drop dead from the bitter cold, poor souls. "Cold" in Réunion island is when température drops below 20°C, which almost never happens. Metropolitan France can easily gets below zero... that's cruel.
 
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I loved the little place and long to return there.

So did & do I!!! I even taught myself to cook Rougail Saucisses. And having broken down and finally bought myself a road bike during the pandemic, with Mt. Ventoux, the Stelvio and Mortirolo under my belt, I'm starting to cast interested looks in the direction of Piton Maïdo...

Air France has a public service obligation of flying there, they have no choice. Others airlines - private - tried to compete but its a lose-lose game. Air Austral is doing a good job, but others have thrown the towel.

FWIW, the island hop was operated by Air Mauritius. Air Austral has since acquired A220s, so I expect they preferentially use those to serve that route nowadays. Then again, they used to have a couple of ATR-72s and still flew 777s at least some of the time?
 

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My first ever airliner flight at 15 was in a BAC 111 from Paris-CDG to London-Gatwick, visiting my auntie in England.
My first ever general aviation flight at 16 was in a Cessna 152, piloted by my best high school buddy.
Unfortunately, I've never flown a helicopter, one of my as-yet unrealized dreams.
 
I finally got my 4th helo flight 2 years ago. My boss & I were coming back from finishing off a solar installation in Phoenix, and we were to stop off in southern Utah to finish off the system at his father-in-law's mountain cabin near Brianhead ski resort.

We learned that a windstorm had downed a bunch of fire-damaged trees across the road in, and we would have to clear them ourselves - which would add a couple hours to the drive up there as well as a lot of work.

My boss is a former US Army helo pilot, and he has his own Bell Jetranger - nearly identical to the US Army's old TH-67s, and it was parked at the local airport in Parowan (the town nearest the job site, and where some of his relatives live).

He didn't want the delay etc, so we put our tools etc in the helo and flew up to the work-site, then back down. My first ride in the front seat of a helo!


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