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

Elliott Hester (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2002

You're belted into a middle seat with burly businessmen on either side. It's 92 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 coach-class
* a heist
* the anatomy of a carryon bag
* a malodorous couple
* the Mile-High Club
* and more!
Fasten your seatbelts. After Plane Insanity, you'll never think of air travel the same way again.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's hard to believe that the stories in Plane Insanity, the hilarious book by Elliott Hester, are true. But they are. Before you read even a single page, you know you're in for a wild ride just from the subtitle: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage, and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet. Hester has encountered just about everything in his 15 years of flying the skies or "riding tin," and he recounts these laugh-out-loud encounters with plenty of attitude and self-deprecating humor. Not to spoil the fun, but a few juicy tidbits include Hester as the hapless victim of a child's projectile vomit, chasing a sparrow around the cabin, mistakenly putting a woman on the wrong flight, and recalling the unfathomable account of an inebriated man defecating atop a liquor cart, to the horror of passengers and crew. Just when you think the stories can't get anymore outlandish he outdoes himself with the titillating antics of amorous couples who vie for membership in the infamous Mile High Club. And did our Mr. Hester himself ever become a member of this elite club? You'll have to read the book to find that out. Believe me, you'll be glad you did--this is the one of the year's funniest reads. --Jill Fergus

From Publishers Weekly

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.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 236 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (January 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312269587
• ISBN-13: 978-0312269586
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,411,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book is Hilarious, July 24, 2003

By 

Michael T. Rognlien (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage, and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet (Hardcover)

I bought this book on a layover in Phoenix and didn't put it down until I was finished. As a very frequent business and personal traveler, I've seen many of the "nightmare" passengers described with such wit and humor by Mr. Hester.

It's always amazing to me how flight attendants are frequently treated like sub-humans by passengers, and how many people seem to lose all sense of tact and personal dignity once their boarding pass is taken. Having witnessed air rage, carry-on's the size of Texas, drunks, brawls and a million other human failings, reading Mr. Hester's flight attendant perspective confirmed what I've always suspected - they deal with a LOT, they're in a thankless position, and they're never appreciated until some heavy turbulence hits.

HIGHLY recommended, whether you're a frequent traveler or not - the humor is universal.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too tame., March 10, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage, and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet (Hardcover)

PLANE INSANITY isn't insane ENOUGH. You hear about wilder and wilder doings on airplanes nowadays. The most famous being when a businessman defecated on a serving cart. (The runner-up might be the high-school kids who had a wet T-shirt contest on a flight.) It's those ludicrous, bewildering stories that you expect to hear in this book. But it's not really what you get. The tales of passengers freaking out, having a little midflight sex, growing belligerent over a lack of overhead space, getting ill -- it's all very mild and routine. Stuff you've probably seen yourself. You'd think with sixteen years in as a flight attendant, this author would be able to expose fantastically improbable moments of jaw-dropping stupidity/insanity/hardheadedness/etc. Doesn't happen. A few of the stories make you laugh, but nothing really socks you over the head. This is a book for anyone who wants to nod his or her head in agreement that plane passengers can be a tough lot to please. (One "outrageous" scene is described like it's the zenith of Sadean debauchery, and all we're hearing about is two women who strip to their undergarments.)

For a flight attendant, this guy can write. His metaphors are a bit broad, but they are amusing.

Anyone expecting the "Kitchen Confidential" of the flying business will be disappointed.

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Visit To the Psych Ward at 30,000 feet!, January 27, 2002

By 

Daniel J. Maloney "Daniel J. Maloney" (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage, and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet (Hardcover)

Question: What happens when you combine from 100 to 350 human beings, confine them in a cramped space for hours on end, and move them around the earth at 500 miles an hour at an altitude of 30,000 feet?

Answer: You create a laboratory for the observer of psychological pathology- or more plainly, you have the antics that occur on a typical airliner on most days in any year.

In" Flight Insanity", Elliott Hester provides the reader with "highlights" of his sixteen-year career as a flight attendant.

Having traveled a fair amount in my life, I know firsthand that flying is nothing exotic. Increasingly, air travel is an uncomfortable trial to endure -- it's "what we have to go through" in order "to end up where we want to be".

Hester's book is rollickingly funny! A breezy read -- detailing incredible, yet entirely believable stories as viewed from the plane's galley.

While I have heard all kinds of flight attendant joke, and laughed at quite a few, by the end of Flight Insanity, I had a new respect for the challenges of this beleaguered profession. The attendants get the last laugh!

Through his stories, Hester provides some great detail into odd tidbits of factual information on air travel and the industry itself. The human beings - passengers, pilots and attendants themselves, are a curious mix at high altitudes. If you travel by plane at all, I highly recommend "Flight Insanity."