Book Review - Fly the friendly skies

Air travel could use a few laughs nowadays. Ha-ha laughs, not Christ-what's-next laughs.

Plane Insanity is an unadulterated insider's report, pre-9-11, on the weird and seamy side of air travel and the life of an airline employee, told by a veteran flight attendant blessed with both an eye for the absurd and a real gift for writing. The book is refreshingly free of the ominous subtext of terrorism: Instead of a story about passengers erroneously freaking out over a group of turban-wearing Sikhs, for example, readers get a tale of passengers justifiably freaking out over a group of reeking French workmen. Elliott Hester's stories — many of which originally appeared in the online magazine Salon — offer this and other assorted lowlights (or highlights, depending on one's perspective) of his 16-year career. A sampling:

"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. ... I've seen 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 6 miles above the Atlantic."

OK. Not everything in the book will elicit ha-ha laughs. Some of his anecdotes — the exit-opening episode comes to mind — deserve more wow, that's fucked up laughs.

These and other stories generally argue against choosing a career as a flight attendant. Hester devotes many pages to the abuse he and his colleagues have taken from an assortment of stupid, drunk and arrogant passengers as well as the airlines they work for; anyone who has ever felt dissed by a flight attendant will take smug satisfaction. But despite it all, Hester keeps on flying: "It gets in your blood," says the reigning scribe of in-flight culture. "It's like malaria. Once it's in there, it never really goes away."