My first ever aeroplane flight

Easter holidays 1963
Just to repeat some of the story shown on previous Blips in Aug/Sept 1962 & January 1963:

Having been born & raised in Trinidad since 1954, I was "dumped" by my parents in September 1962 at All Hallows Preparatory Boarding School near Shepton Mallet, Somerset. This was "standard" practice for all expat workers of BP who indeed paid for the large part of UK schooling & an annual return flight.

My father had then returned back to Trinidad but my mother stayed on during the autumn & together we drove to my grandmother's near Heidelberg in Germany for Christmas, returning to the UK in January 1963 in a horrendous drive in that Great Freeze winter. My mother had then also returned to Trinidad.

As BP only paid one return flight pe year, that was reserved for the long summer holidays but I needed somewhere to go at Easter. So at the tender age of 8 years & 7 months was put on a train from Somerset to Paddington where I was picked up by a "Universal Auntie", taken to Heathrow  & handed over to Lufthansa as an unaccompanied child for their flight LH101 to Frankfurt.

On arrival at Frankfurt airport was met by my German family, my grandmother, elder uncle, his wife & two children as well as younger uncle & Sepperl the dachshund. As was very normal back then, was presented with flowers - flying was quite something back then!

From top left to right: Stina (Christina) elder uncle & photographer Georg's Swedish wife, Gran Adele, younger uncle Jochen (14 years older than me), Suzanna & Gunnar my younger cousins, me in school uniform & Sepperl (diminutive form of Sepp= Bavarian for Joseph).

Uncle Georg was a doctor at nearby Rüsselsheim hospital, the home of Opel cars started by Adam Opel in 1899 after he had started a sewing machine factory there in 1862. It's part of the area of Gross Gerau near Frankfurt airport. The Opel at the left of the photo shows the registration for Gross Gerau - "GG" - which are also my initials. In the 1950s my parents had bought a couple of new Opels directly from the factory when on holiday in Europe & shipped them back to Trinidad afterwards.

Uncle Georg always had big Mercedes cars himself, the one on the right!

These flights to Frankfurt were to become regular for me during the 60s. The return flight was always with Pan-Am, flight PA101. I don't remember if it was this particular Easter 1963 return flight but once, we had an engine failure approaching Heathrow. They were Boeing 707s, some no major problem but a bit exciting.

I wonder how many 8-year-old children get shipped around the world like this nowadays?