INTERVIEWS

PLANE INSANITY

Sun-Sentinel
Ft Lauderdale, Florida

METRO SECTION: LIVING, January 25, 2002 Friday

AIRBORNE INSANITY: A FLIGHT ATTENDANT TELLS ALL
John Tanasychuk, State Correspondent

Elliott Hester remembers the camaraderie on airplanes the first few weeks after Sept. 11.

"People said 'God bless you!' and 'Thank you for coming to work today,' " recalls Hester, a Miami Beach-based flight attendant. "It was quiet. I've never seen it so quiet."

Now, flying is a different story.

"As time passed, we've become ourselves again," says Hester. "In some ways it's a good thing."

It's certainly a good thing for Hester and his first book, Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet (St. Martin's Press, $23.95). The insanity comes courtesy of the flying public and his colleagues – and Hester tells all.

He tells of litigious passengers who threaten to sue if they can't move to first class. He tells of small children, seemingly abandoned by parents to projectile-vomit in the company of strange airline attendants. He tells of sexual rapture, drunkenness, fear, fist fights, flatulence and Big Bertha, the flight attendant from hell.

And he tells it all with the observational skills of a quirky anthropologist and the timing of a stand-up comic.

Hester devotes one chapter to a notorious midnight flight that departs daily from New York to Puerto Rico.

"At any time during the flight you might witness a card game with serious money involved," he writes. "Gold chains flashed on a regular basis. Boom boxes, while not uncommon, had the uncommon habit of blasting music loud enough for everyone to hear. Rumor had it that on one exceptionally rambunctious flight, a group of hookers worked the coach-class lavatories. Passengers who wished to use the lavs for conventional purposes simply had to wait."

"The psychology of flying on an airplane is such that people are off balance," Hester says from the comfort of a chaise lounge in his South Beach apartment. "You have no control. You can't see where you're going. It's an unnatural event. People become unnerved by that. People act out their fears in a variety of ways."

Plane Insanity documents the worst of those ways in a tone that's both honest and intelligent.

"These are 16 years of stories," says Hester, 43. "If it all happened in a month, I'd probably go crazy."

The book also goes a long way toward dispelling the myths of wanton "stewardesses" that began with Coffee Tea or Me: The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses, co-authored by Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones in 1967.

"I read it again before I wrote the book," says Hester. "The stereotype of the single, bubble-headed flight attendant has stayed with travelers for years."

There have been other books written by flight attendants. One compiled anecdotes and jokes. Another detailed a flight attendant's experiences pampering such stars as Michael Jackson and Robert De Niro on MGM Grand Air.

Coming in March is Around the World in a Bad Mood: Confessions of a Flight Attendant, by Rene Foss, based on her musical revue of the same name. But the biggest boost for flight attendants may be Gwyneth Paltrow's starring role in The View From the Top, due in theaters in April, in which she portrays a rookie airline attendant from humble beginnings who dreams of seeing the world.

At last, Hester says, flight attendants will have more than one voice speaking on their behalf.

"Flight attendants have a thankless job," says Hester. "A lot of people don't realize that the flight attendant they're turning their nose up at has evacuated thousands of people in a crash. Every year, we watch a videotape of the year's tragedies. One minute a flight attendant is being called a peanut pusher. The next minute, she's rescuing a crying baby."

Hester's career started in his hometown of Chicago. After high school, he headed to the University of New Mexico where he graduated with a degree in speech communications. Back in Chicago, he landed a job as a media buyer at a big advertising agency. "I hated every aspect of my job," he says.

For the next four years, he worked as a fashion model, doing catalogs for Sears and JC Penney.

"I didn't have insurance and I needed some stability," he says. So Hester remembered what a college counselor had once said: "What you should do is decide what kind of lifestyle you want to have first."

Hester knew he loved to travel, and one cold winter in the Windy City, he started working as a part-time baggage handler. Soon, he was in flight attendant training.

"They asked me what I was going to do with my time off and I told them I was going to travel," he says. "I'm a travel freak. As a flight attendant, I live the life of a wealthy man without having any money."

When he lived in New York, he'd often show up at Kennedy Airport with three days off and no destination in mind. He'd see where flights were headed and end up someplace like Barbados, where he'd rent a shack and hang out on the beach.

Writing was always part of his long-term plan, but he didn't get serious until 1989 when he took a leave of absence to travel around the world. He spent much of that time in Australia.

While Hester won't reveal which airline he flies for, it's a career he's happy about.

"Like a lot of my colleagues," he writes, "I figured I'd fly a few years, see a bit of the world, then trade my wings for something better. But flying gets in your blood. It's like malaria. Once it's in there, it never really goes away. So, I choose to keep on flying. I deal with the 14-hour days and polyester pants. I placate the cussing business fliers, sidestep the puking kids, and duck the fists of air-ragers who see me as the root of evil. Amid the chaos, I continue to jet around the planet whenever I have a few days off."

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