They say you never forget your first love, and for those of us who fly, there’s usually that one special airplane that first grabbed hold of us and seared itself into our memory like no other. With the countless different types of airplanes that have emerged since the dawn of flight, those first favorites can take a variety of shapes and sizes depending upon whom you’re talking to. Sometimes it’s the first airplane we ever flew; other times it’s an airplane that gave us performance we’d never dreamed of; and for others it’s an airplane whose controls felt like an extension of our own bodies. Whatever the reason, those makes and models sparked a fire in us and gave us our first real taste of how truly amazing it is to fly.
We asked some of the world’s most famous pilots to reveal their “first loves” in aviation, and they readily dished their stories. While each of the following five tales is unique and every airplane different, they all laid the foundation early on for a lifelong love affair with aviation.
