INTERVIEWS

PLANE INSANITY

NBC Today Show
News Transcripts

Saturday Today (7:00 AM ET) - NBC, March 9, 2002

Elliott Hester discusses his book, "Plane Insanity"

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN; DAVID BLOOM: Anchors

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, co-host: Sixteen years around the world can open your eyes to people and things. And it's especially true for the frequent fliers, the airline employees who've seen more than they thought was ever possible, high above it all. Elliott Hester is a veteran flight attendant and he chronicles many a wild ride in his first book, which is called "Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet."

Elliott, good morning. Nice to see you. This book is so funny.
Mr. ELLIOTT HESTER ("Plane Insanity"): Thanks. I'm glad you liked it.

O'BRIEN: Thank you. And yet you start off by saying, 'I never wanted to be a flight attendant.'
Mr. HESTER: That's true. It was sort of an accident, you know. I was actually working, loading bags at O'Hare Airport. And it was a three-day period where it was 64 degrees below zero.

O'BRIEN: With the windchill.
Mr. HESTER: Windchill factor, yes, exactly. And I realized I didn't want to work on the ramp anymore. And there was a flight attendant looking down at me from one of the planes. And she had this...

O'BRIEN: Warm inside.
Mr. HESTER: ...exactly, and she was sipping tea or something. And I'm sitting there, 'Why should I work out here with these guys when I can work up there with her?' So...

O'BRIEN: Now to your mother's pride and joy you have become a writer.
Mr. HESTER: Yes, I am.

O'BRIEN: And I would imagine that, was there some point where there were so just many crazy stories in the air you were like, 'I have so much material I have to write a book'?
Mr. HESTER: Yeah, exactly. I wrote a story back in 1995 about a passenger who--a guy who started crying on the airplane and asked me to hold him.

O'BRIEN: This is the guy who in the book–because you tell the story–who was so obnoxious and unpleasant to everyone for the entire ride until this little turbulence.
Mr. HESTER: Yeah, right. Right. So we had some turbulence and I went up there and he asked–he literally asked me to hold him. I'm like, 'What are you talking about, you know. So I held the guy and I told him it would be better.' And he apologized for being a jerk and was a better person because of it, I guess.

O'BRIEN: We hope so, right.
Mr. HESTER: Yeah, we hope so.

O'BRIEN: A lot of the book, in fact, is about bad behavior among passengers. What do you think it is about airline travel that turns the seemingly most normal, nice, regular folks into just horrible little beasts?
Mr. HESTER: Well, there's something that happens, I think, with some people. You get on an airplane and there's this sense of confinement, and also of the fact that you are participating in an unnatural act. And people–and also the lack of control. And those three elements combined, I think, make some people just sort of freak out on the airplane.

O'BRIEN: How about the alcohol? Because I mean you're basically saying the confined space, alcohol and you're stressed?
Mr. HESTER: Right.

O'BRIEN: Do you think those things really add up to your...
Mr. HESTER: Absolutely. And the alcohol, 80 to 90 percent of all cases of bad behavior on airplanes, I think are traced back to alcohol. It's–it's–syou can have the nicest person sitting there, everything's fine and all of a sudden, boom, a vodka tonic and it's all over.

O'BRIEN: Tell me the worst story that you can think of. I mean, you've got a lot in this book, and some of them are just yucky, gross stories. What's the very worst thing you experienced as a flight attendant?
Mr. HESTER: Well, one of the most difficult things is actually to tell people that they have to get off the airplane. Most airlines have a rule that if you stink, if your body odor is unpleasant...

O'BRIEN: There's really a rule?
Mr. HESTER: Oh, yeah, it's in there, black and white. We have the right to deny boarding for passengers who have an unpleasant body odor. And I've actually had to go up to passengers and say, 'Excuse me, Mr. Anderson, you stink. And we're going to have to ask you to leave.'

O'BRIEN: And how do they take that?
Mr. HESTER: Not very good. It's a very difficult thing to do and we actually had a couple who we had to ask leave the airplane and they refused to leave. And, you know, the passengers were like, 'Get these people out of here, I can't sit next to these pigs because'–so it's really tough.

O'BRIEN: Gosh. You also were on a flight where literally as the plane is taxiing down the runway, people are ripping off the plane?
Mr. HESTER: Yeah, it was in the island of–island of Curacao, the plane was taxiing toward the runway. The captain stopped the airplane because the indicator light–the cargo door indicator light went off. And apparently...

O'BRIEN: You mean the cargo doors were open and you didn't know what was going on.
Mr. HESTER: Exactly. And apparently there was a man running alongside the airplane while it was moving, opened the cargo door and stole a bag with $500,000 in unmarked bills.

O'BRIEN: It turns out it was an inside job...
Mr. HESTER: Exactly.

O'BRIEN: ...and you kind of have a little epilogue in your book...
Mr. HESTER: Exactly.

O'BRIEN: ...where you say that I guess they caught the folks who did that.
Mr. HESTER: They caught the guy.

O'BRIEN: Five hundred thousand dollars.
Mr. HESTER: Exactly. He started spending money, you know, in large sums on a small island. Of course, the trail led back to them.

O'BRIEN: Since September 11th, how has your job changed?
Mr. HESTER: Well, I think immediately following the attacks, when the skies reopened, there was this sense of camaraderie on the airplane that never existed before. I think for the first time in commercial aviation history, people, both flight attendants, pilots and passengers realized that we're literally all in this together. And it was illustrated quite dramatically of course on September 11th–on–on September 11th. So, people would get on the airplane and say things to me and to other flight attendants like, you know, 'Thank you for flying today. God bless you.' And believe me, that never happened before in my 16 years of travel. So people are much more willing to help each other, and to understand the fact that they are all in this together.

O'BRIEN: Think it's going to last?
Mr. HESTER: It's lasting. You know, it's hanging in there.

O'BRIEN: Good. Well that's nice to hear. Hopefully you've got lots of material for your next book. Elliott Hester, nice to see you. Thanks for joining us.
Mr. HESTER: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

O'BRIEN: And when you write your next book, we'd like to have you back telling more stores. You can read an excerpt of "Plane Insanity" on our Web site which is weekendtoday.msnbc.com.

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