knotheadusc's Full Review: Elliot Hester - Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant...
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be a flight attendant? Do movies like 1980's Airplane! make you chuckle? Have you ever wondered how many people are actual members of the "Mile High Club"? Do you even know what the "Mile High Club" is? If you can answer 'yes' to any of these questions, you might really enjoy Elliott Hester's 2001 national bestselling book Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage, and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet. I happened to pick it up last weekend while browsing a Barnes & Noble bookstore with my husband. We needed something light to read after choosing another book with a comparatively heavier theme (see my last review if you're the slightest bit interested). Just one look at the cover of Plane Insanity and I knew I was in for a bumpy ride through the mixed up world of air travel.
Elliott Hester is himself a flight attendant who got into the business of asking people about their preferred food and beverage choices back in 1985, when he was working at Chicago's O'Hare airport as a part-time baggage handler. He was dressed for the extreme weather that often strikes the Windy City, slinging around other peoples' Samsonites, when he happened to notice a flight attendant sitting in the window, drinking something steamy. She waved at him forlornly, giving him a look of pure pity as he worked in the freezing elements. It suddenly occurred to Hester that instead of heaving huge suitcases out in the cold with a bunch of sweaty, hairy guys, he could be working in a nice, warm, airplane with a bunch of attractive, well-groomed, women. The rest is history. Hester, by the way, frequently makes it very clear that he is not gay. Apparently, homosexuality among male flight attendants is rampant, although he didn't provide any hard and fast data on that.
Besides his career as a flight attendant, Hester is also an award winning travel writer and a former Salon.com columnist. His writing chops are strongly evident in Plane Insanity, because I often found myself laughing out loud as I read his lurid tales of life in the friendly skies. Hester has divided this book into seven parts, providing several short stories within each part and dividing each part with a funny news story about the airline industry. There are also some very clever illustrations included, apparently provided by a very talented Scott Gills. I thought they added tremendously to Hester's book, since they were humorous and provided a good lead in to the topics. At the end of the book, Hester has added an afterword and a very entertaining section called "Believe It or Not: More Mind Boggling Airline News From Around The Globe". This section consists solely of amusing or shocking news articles about aviation or air travel related subjects collected from newspapers from around the world.
What else can you expect to read about? In the introductory pages, you will learn a little bit about the so-called "Charm Farm", which is where flight attendant wanna be's go to learn their trade. Hester writes about how trainees are taught to project the proper company image. Hester wrote that one of his roommates was kicked out for laughing too loudly in the hallway. A black trainee with naturally red hair and freckles to match was forced to dye her hair black because the "grooming coordinator", an alleged style expert, felt that the trainee's red hair projected the wrong image. A platinum blonde from California was forced to dye her hair to a more suitable color as well. Unfortunately, the inexperienced airline stylist ended up turning the woman's locks green and the platinum blonde Californian ended up quitting the program in tears. Of course there was a lot more to training than learning how to look the part of a proper flight attendant. Suffice it to say, Hester makes it clear that this part of his career change was sheer hell.
Once he passed through training, Hester began his work, and that's when we start reading about the funny things that happened on his many, many trips. There were smelly passengers, some whom the flight attendants were able to convince to freshen up and others who, well... ended up escorted off the plane! There were condescending, demanding jerks, as well as obnoxious co-workers. I particularly enjoyed reading the story of Big Bertha, a legendary flight attendant who had been flying with Hester's airline for years and had struck fear in the hearts of many a co-worker. If you read this book, you'll get to find out what happens when Hester runs into her. Hester has run across a few exotic critters on his flights, too, including a ferret in first class. Hester has witnessed people having sex on airplanes (hence, they joined the Mile High Club) and he himself has partaken in carnal pleasures on board aircraft; he's also witnessed a heist of $500,000 in broad daylight and a violent brawl onboard a airplane that involved a number of people on their way to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Moreover, Hester has heard "We'll never fly this airline again." more times than he'd care to count.
Hester has wolfed down plenty of airplane food, mainly because flight attendants never have time to pack food for themselves. Bet you didn't know that the caterers don't generally prepare food for the flight attendants, so they eat the leftovers! Hester dares readers to peek in the galley after meal service to see if they can catch flight attendants mooching meals. Did you know that if you prepare food at home in the United States, fly outside the country, and then try to bring the food back through customs, it will probably be confiscated? This is a dilemma many flight attendants face, especially during fourteen hour shifts! Hester also fesses up about some of his own major blunders. He once opened the emergency door and accidentally allowed the slide pack to fall out, potentially hurting or killing anyone who happened to be walking beneath the plane. One time, he even sent a woman bound for Antigua to Barbados!
We also get to find out what becomes of flight attendants and other staff members once they get off the plane. Hester doesn't skimp on the juicy details about what happens on layovers. Apparently flight attendants lead fairly wild lives... or at least some of them do. But I guess that could be true of any profession! I'd love to spoil some of the surprises and write about some of the juicier stuff Hester has included in this book, but then you'd have no reason to read it for yourselves and that would be a pity indeed. Suffice it to say that a great deal of what Hester writes about involves sex and boozing... and the grave importance for flight attendants to own a good travel alarm clock!
I will warn that this book is not for prudish types. While there's no obscene language in it, or none that I remember offhand anyway, there are a couple of sexual situations in it that may be offensive to the more conservative folks. Also, Hester does frequently mention that he's not gay. I looked this book up on Amazon.com and a few people on there who had read and reviewed Plane Insanity commented that they felt that he had emphasized his heterosexual orientation excessively. I didn't think so myself, but then sexual orientation as a topic is not something that I'm overly sensitive about. He mentions it several times, once or twice because it was relevant to the story he was relating-- a woman who had wanted to jump his bones in one of the lavatories commented that she knew he was gay when he turned her down, an irate passenger referred to him as a "gay boy", and he seems to want to make it clear to readers that not all male flight attendants are gay. But I didn't think that, given the subject matter, Hester was fixated on his sexual orientation. Still, if you think that this is something that might offend you, steer clear of this book.
I think that Elliott Hester has a unique way with words and his is one of the most original voices I've ever come across. I found this book highly entertaining, a quick read, and the perfect antidote for stress. Read it after a hard day at work. After a few of Hester's stories, you might appreciate your job a little more and learn a bit about the much beleaguered airline industry to boot!
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