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

by Elliott Hester and Elliot Hester

Book 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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312310064
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.6" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Funny Book

I loved this book. I read it in two days because I couldn't stop laughing. I fly frequently and have always wondered what kind of fun story's flight attendance have.

Brilliant, Hilarious, Entertaining & Honest

Hester is witty, insightful, writes with razor wit and a great gift of phrase. His prose blends the sense of absurd of Bill Bryson's travel books with the delivery of a Dave Barry. Besides a tremendous amount of entertainment (I literally laughed out loud), this is more than a collection of you-won't-believe-what-happened-to-us-next baddabings: Hester's anecdotes have a warm, sometimes poignant humanity to them,with an empathy for what the experience of being locked in a metallic tube with strangers at 600 mph all night can reveal about the human condition. Anyone who's ever considered an airline career should read Hester, who is telling the truth about the unique flight-attendant lifstyle and the rarified subculture it creates, done with warmth, irony, honesty and wit. I would also recommend Around The World In A Bad Mood by Renee Foss, another seasoned-flight-attendant memoir in a lighter vein.

This Book is Hilarious

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.

In the Friendly Skies

Ever wonder what the job of a flight attendant consists of when you are being hurtled through space in that metal cylinder? It isn't just coffee, tea or me. Elliott Hester has written a wacky, fun, never dull book on the challanges of dealing with the public at 30,000 feet.Everything that could go wrong does wrong on an airliner. Only when it goes awry up there it is ten times worse. He tells of Big Bertha, the flight attendant from hell, who makes macho pilots quake in their boots. The San Juan flight where two men get in a fight over a Panama hat, passengers who try to sneak into first class, the passengers from hell. The list goes on. Hester writes with great humor and a very entertaining style. This book is one that everyone who gets on an airplane should read. The next time you see a flight attendant serving dinner or taking care of the passengers you will have a new appreciation of them.My hat is off to the men and women who work the friendly skies

Talk about low job satisifaction

I've been reading Elliot Hester articles in the San Francisco Chronicle for a while and I was looking forward to his book coming out. Unfortunately it was delayed due to the recent events, but it was worth the wait. It's filled with really funny incidents from Elliot's 16 years as a flight attendant. I really wish I had this book for the holidays, it would have made dealing with the current realities of flying - as frustrating as flying can be now, it doesn't compare to the stories in this book!