New Book: "Plane Insanity"
 

Amuzing book written by a flight attendent. Sure, there are other similar books out there, but I think this one is superior!

The "Mile High Club" from former MGM Grand Air stewardess Diana Benson would be a good read.

Just finished plane insanity, its a good read for the gym. Basically, its all of his columns from salon.com. You can save lots of cash and just read it online.

lala

You may want to catch up with this discussion as well:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum...ML/002498.html

I saw him at a reading in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago. Its funny how he is forbidden from speaking of for whom he flies, but its obvious from speaking of routes and aircraft types, etc. In any event, I found him mildly amusing - I didn't see how much the book cost, but my sense is that it will be a good paperback read eventually.

I've always been fond of the library. Amazing place, they will order a book if they don't have it.

I'm reading this at the moment - good but not great !
Seems that the book "Perfect Attendants ....." is a better read - I've read the excerpts on www.perfectattendantsbook.com and i've laughed out loud a lot more - will buy that one as well & can compare.

I just finished this over the weekend and it was good, but I wouldn't highly recommend anybody running out to buy it. It's an OK read, but there are many parts of it that make you wonder if it's not half fiction, little things that just don't happen (for example at one part he devotes a chapter to how he screwed up when he was taking the boarding passes and let somebody on who shouldn't have been on that flight, which isn't something I have ever seen flight attendants doing)

Flight attendants for certain airlines have taken the BPs in the past, and I have had to pull back to the gate to let someone off who suddenly realized, during taxi, she wasn't supposed to be on that plane... at which time that old song "By the Time I get to Phoenix, my plane will be Late" began playing in my head.

I have to say that the perfectattendant website is very nice. It has a fresh and modern look. Thanks for the link.

AA and DL always had a FA standing at the jetway door taking BP's. Only recently have they not done this - and when there is an extra on board I believe they still do this.

The pilots in Russia sample story at www.perfectattendantsbook.com is a classic urban legand. It is very similar to the second example in the explanation of this legends to be found at:

http://www.snopes.com/spoons/legends/bug-rug.htm

While I am sure that many of the stories in the book are quite humorous, don't expect them to be necessarily true.

TW used to do this as well...at least they did when i was doing the STL-PDX run.

Sex and Absurdity in the Not-Always-Friendly Skies

ELLIOTT HESTER'S new book has gone into a second printing, and that's probably a good sign.

It suggests that we are starting to come out of it. Though the commercial aviation system remains under the tightest security measures ever, and new warnings keep coming about terrorist threats, the book's success shows that we can at least laugh again about the fundamentally miserable, and altogether unnatural, experience of traveling by air.

The book is "Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet," published Jan. 14 by St. Martin's Press.

"It was originally supposed to be released Oct. 3," said Mr. Hester, who has been a flight attendant since 1985. But early October was no time to be promoting a book that has chapter titles like "Payback for a Condescending Jerk," "Pass the Defibrillator, Please," and "Lechery at 30,000 Feet." So it was delayed for three months, till things calmed down.

Another terrorist attack would, of course, revoke this immediately, but now, deep in the winter of 2002, there is a sense, especially among business travelers and other frequent fliers, that flying is starting to return to normal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/13/business/13TRAV.html

I read Plain Insanity last Saturday while on a mileage run. I thought it was a pretty hilarious way to pass the time. Every flight attendant who saw it said they wished they had kept notes over the years and written their own book. Each thought they would have had plenty of material.

I heard Hester on a radio interview and thought he was quite charming.

EASTBAY1K: would you please give us your guess as to which airline? I'd say American, but I am not confident that I am correct. And the book did cost a hefty $23.95.

I just finished Plane Insanity and found it entertaining. It's a quick read and each chapter is a self-contained story so you can jump around the book to stuff that interests you.

Based on the author's description of his trips, I'm also voting for AA as his employer.

It would have to be American. There were too many references to things (in his talk) like flying to the Dominican Republic, certain Airbus aircraft, and other references that made me 99.9997% certain.

Thanks, guys, for "confirming" that it is American. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

(From my blog www.knifetricks.blogspot.com. Yeah, the book is four years old, but we take it slow here in northern Thailand.)


Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet by Elliott Hester (St. Martin's Press 2002).


For sixteen years, Elliott Hester worked as a black, male, straight flight attendant. So he certainly has a unique perspective.

He can also write. His prose is light-weight, but it has the quality which the French call attention, you want to keep turning the page to see what he'll say next about his years in the sky.

He should have said more. The book Plane Insanity (titled In-flight Entertainment outside the United States) is a collection of Hester's columns for Salon.com, the on-line magazine that everyone used to read in the '90s but no one has read in years.

Hester plays all the greatest hits. He tells stories about puking kids, disgusting businessmen, arrogant pilots and mile-high-clubbing couples. He occasionally worked the infamous San Juan Special, a cheapo overnight flight from New York to Puerto Rico, where drunken fights were a norm and mothers routinely asked the cabin crew to fill baby bottles with cola. (Although Hester never reveals which airline he worked for, the routings and equipment make it fairly obvious he worked for American.)

Hester also describes some of the insider aspects of the job, like the fact that flight crews do not go to the bathroom in the last few hours of a flight because they need to be loaded for a potential random drug test upon landing. In one of the better columns, Hester tells of how a "crew room" in Caracas -- a hotel room rented by the airline to serve as an employee lounge -- descended into a bacchanalia, with pilots drinking belly shots of tequila from the navels of near-naked flight attendants.

The book contains a few tips for the frequent flyer. There is not enough room in the 757's overhead bins to accommodate every passenger's carry-on, while the 767 has more room than can normally be filled. The airlines will allow a "celebrity animal" to fly in its own seat, but a non-famous animal which happens to be with a celebrity must be kept caged. Check-in technology has made it almost impossible for a passenger to get on the wrong flight.

The anecdotes are funny, and enough anecdotes make a column, but they don't make a book. Hester never pulls back and gives you a bigger picture. He writes about funny things that people said and did during flight attendant training and during a three-day reassignment, but he never gives you an overview of "Charm School" or explains how a three-day reassignment actually works. What did Hester do during the course of a normal day? What is the flight attendant routine? How does an airline actually work? Hester never says, because he's busy telling the story of the business-class blow job, which is:

A flight attendant notices that a man in business class has a frozen expression of bliss on his face and that a blanket on his lap is making suspicious up-and-down movements. The flight attendant comes over and removes the blanket to reveal a woman in flagrante delicto.

"Ma'am, this type of behavior is not appropriate in business class," the flight attendant says.

The woman does not hear and proceeds apace.

"Ma'am," the flight attendant shouts, "this type of behavior is not appropriate in business class!"

The woman hears, interrupts her activity and asks, "Can we take a seat in coach?"

Good story. OK book. I'm sure there's better.