Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage, and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet

by Elliott Hester

Overview

Make sure your seatbacks and tray tables are in their full upright and locked position for these shocking, bizarre, hilarious, and outrageous stories of airplane travel.

You're belted into a middle seat with burly businessmen on either side. It's ninety-two degrees in the cabin and someone forgot to use deodorant. A baby screams. A kid kicks the back of your seat. After two hours you haven't even left the taxiway. Welcome to modern airline travel! In Plane Insanity, Elliott Hester delivers stories that could only come from someone who "rides tin" for a living—-a flight attendant.

You'll hear about:
* the passenger from hell
* a smuggled python
* prostitutes working the lavatories
* a riot in coachclass
* a $500,000 heist
* the anatomy of a carry-on bag
* a malodorous couple
* the Mile-High Club
* and much more!

Fasten your seatbelts. After Plane Insanity, you'll never think of air travel the same way again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312310066
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/05/2003
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,163,055
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Bestselling author Elliott Hester is a flight attendant, award-winning travel writer, and former Salon.com columnist. He writes, "Continental Drifter," a syndicated travel column carried by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Miami Herald, New York Newsday, and other daily newspapers. He lives in Miami Beach, Florida.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	xiii
I	Bad Trips
1.	Something Smelly in the Air	3
2.	Payback for a Condescending Jerk	9
3.	Flying the Queasy Skies	14
4.	The Heist	17
5.	Escape from New York	22
6.	The Ferret in First Class	34
II	Pugnacity Aloft
7.	When Fists Flew on the San Juan Special	45
8.	Preventing the "Delinquent-Flier" Upgrade	51
9.	Conduct Unbecoming an Investment Banker	57
10.	The Passenger from Hell	61
III	The Motley Crew
11.	Fly Boys and Girls	73
12.	The Flight Attendant from Hell	85
13.	Tests, Drugs and Swollen Bladders	92
IV	"Huh?" Traveling in the State of Confusion
14.	I Thought This Plane Was Heading to Antigua	99
15.	Anatomy of a Carry-On Bag	109
16.	Good Ole Airplane Sustenance	115
17.	Doing the Non-Rev Shuffle	120
18.	Out of the Mouths of Passengers	125
V	Rocket Science
19.	Adios Hydraulics	135
20.	Pass the Defibrillator Please	139
21.	Sorry, Captain, I Broke the Airplane	154
22.	The Thing About Turbulence ...	160
VI	Layovers in Purgatory
23.	Beer and Loathing in Caracas	171
24.	Sex and the Thin-Walled Hotel Room	178
25.	Just Another Flight to Cali, Colombia	183
26.	The No-Show	192
VII	The MMM-MMM-MMM Mile-High Club
27.	Lechery at 30,000 Feet	201
28.	Miguel Mendoza: Playboy of the Skies	207
29.	Membership Has Its Privileges	211
	Afterword	218
	Believe It or Not: More Mind-Boggling Airline News from Around the Globe	221

Editorial Reviews

...chronicles the circus of modern air travel...with an entertaining edge...” —Andrew Essex, Articles Editor, Details

“In this day of air rage, nothing could be a more timely tonic than Elliott Hester's captivating observations...” —Thomas Swick, Travel Editor, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

“...should be required reading for every businessman and woman in coach.” —Julie Cooper, San Antonio Express-News

“What a great book! Elliott Hester's insider view of air travel is by turns hilarious, insightful and even touching.” —Larry Bleiberg, Travel Editor, Dallas Morning News

“Hester's witty tales and sensuous, cautionary parables, offer an insider's view to travel, sex, and social etiquette...Indispensable.” —Nick Charles, Staff Writer, People

“With humor and poignant humanity, Hester confirms what you always suspected:...the flight attendants are thinking exactly what you are.” —Jane Wooldridge, Travel Editor, Miami Herald

“Hester gives us a window-seat view of what life in the air is '*really'* like.” —Scott Rosenberg, Managing Editor, Salon.com

“Everyone who's ever flown will recognize at least one character, one incident, one exasperating moment.” —Marjorie Robins, Travel Editor, New York Newsday

“By turns funny, outrageous, and revealing.” —Keith Bellows, Editor-in-Chief, National Geographic Traveler

From the Publisher

Flight attendant Elliot Hester's hilarious Plane Insanity is a collection of true stories about working the "friendly" skies. Medical emergencies, lusty passengers, snakes hidden in carry-on bags, and shocking air-rage incidents are just a day at the office for Hester. His lighthearted comic writing and irreverent stories make this an unforgettable read.

bn.com

In his debut book of hilarious essays, syndicated columnist Hester expertly recounts "lowlights" from his 16-year career as a flight attendant for major U.S. airlines. Like an angrier, more street-wise Dave Barry, Hester zeroes in on bad trips, in-flight fighting, intolerable co-workers and airline procedures, broken airplanes, bad layovers and sex on airplanes (aka the "Mile High Club"). Addicted to "travel by whim," Hester isn't complaining "The ability to fly for next to nothing is the reason I took this job." He's just sharing: "I once saw a drunken couple puke on each other until they looked as if they'd emerged from a pool of oatmeal. I watched a smug-faced man receiving high altitude fellatio from a woman he'd just met on the flight," as well as "full-blown airplane brawls, passenger stampedes, a flight attendant in the midst of a nervous breakdown, passengers in various stages of undress, and stressed-out flyers attempting to open the emergency exit six miles above the Atlantic." These and other stories (an onboard robbery in which $500,000 was stolen on a 727) will be a revelation to anyone who has flown; Hester's careful, well-paced descriptions show that what happens behind the scenes is worse than one could imagine and that modern attendants take this craziness for granted. Hester also provides a wide assortment of various other true-life airline shenanigans taken from newspapers and wire service reports, which adds to his book's lurid charm. 7 b&w illus. (Nov. 7) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly