Flights From Hell flies you into the crazy skies with stories about the adventures and anxieties of airplane travel.

Commercial airline travel takes us far, far out of our comfort zone. We're herded into cylinders that zip hundreds of miles per hour at 30,000 feet, subjected to security screenings, confronted with delays and lost luggage, rushed to catch connecting flights, constrained to small seats, scrunched up with strangers, and surrounded by pathogens. Is it any wonder we end up becoming a bundle of raw nerves by journey's end?

Uncaring Husband Needs A Heart Transplant

November 30, 2007 Illness/Medical Stories

I travel a lot for business. I started this at a fairly young age, so I was a bit inexperienced in the ways of the world. But I have always been an accommodating person, I don’t complain much and I take it all in stride. It must be my Midwestern background. Anyway, I was on […]

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Is There A Doctor On Board?

November 30, 2007 Illness/Medical Stories

My husband and I were traveling with our two children (aged two and five.) The flight was uneventful but then we were delayed after landing as we waited for an open gate. After sitting with no air flow for half an hour the plane became quite hot and stuffy and apparently a pregnant women on […]

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Hubby Dearest

November 29, 2007 Couples Stories

About six years ago, I traveled with the passenger from hell. The problem was, it was my husband. We were going from New York to Sacramento, CA to visit my relatives. I should have known the trip was doomed when he forgot his insulin (hubby dearest was diabetic) and didn’t remember until we were almost […]

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Unhappily Married Couple

November 29, 2007 Couples Stories

New York to Houston. I am sitting next to a married couple, Texans on their way home. He asks her when she got the earrings she is wearing. She proceeds to confess her affair and accuses him of neglecting her and their marriage, etc. She says that she isn’t soliciting his opinion and that she […]

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Travel Tip

November 27, 2007 Portly Stories

I had a five hour flight ahead of me and settled into my aisle seat near the back. A fellow who could charitably be described as portly squeezed into the middle seat. If he weighed 20 pounds he weighed 300. His mass of flesh spilled over the armrest forcing me to lean lean left like […]

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Intolerable Impersonator

November 20, 2007 Passenger Stories

Tedious passenger… On a recent flight from Las Vegas to San Francisco there was a young guy seated three rows behind me who clearly believed that he was ‘the next Rich Little’, and how wrong he was! His loud, non-stop, awful vocal impersonations of – amongst others – Borat, Ali G, Eddie Murphy, George Bush, […]

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Skiers Get Tanked, Then Things Really Go Downhill

November 20, 2007 Passenger Stories

Some years ago my husband and I signed up for an all-inclusive ski trip to Austria sponsored by a ski club in our area. I don’t think it was a ski club – more like a drinking club from a local bar that decided Austria would be a good place to party. The flight over […]

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Yakking Yuppie

November 20, 2007 Passenger Stories

Here’s a note scribed to my friends while I was on a cross country flight home recently: Sitting on the flight home from Seattle just starting to doze… The poster boy for yuppiedom came from first class to chat with an elderly couple he knows sitting in the row in front of me. Plunked his […]

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Man Wants To Take A 30,000 Foot Stroll

November 20, 2007 Passenger Stories

I was on a flight from Hong Kong to New York in first-class. It’s a 14-hour flight and about 7 hours in, a man began getting up, walking to an area specifically for the flight crew and walking back. Soon, I noticed they were telling this man to take his seat and NO, he could […]

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The Pleasures Of Flying These Days

November 16, 2007 Delay/Cancellation Stories

I received automated telephone notification from American Airlines that my noon flight from NY to LA would be delayed an hour. When I got to the gate the equipment wasn’t there and departure time came and went. A half-hour later the flight was cancelled. We then had to go to the ticket counter, get our […]

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Baggage Bungle

November 16, 2007 Luggage Stories

When my wife and I flew to Italy, the first two legs were on American Airlines. The first flight was supposed to be a non-stop from San Francisco to JFK. It circled Ohio for a while and then had to land at Newark to refuel for the 15 minute flight to JFK. We were told […]

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Holy Bovine!

November 16, 2007 Luggage Stories

Air India: Holy Cow! (Pun intended.) I just flew them from Newark to Paris. 1. On arrival, my luggage was delayed by TWO HOURS. 2. On departure, the flight from Paris was delayed by FIVE HOURS, leaving me to miss my connection to SFO. 3. At Newark, I had to spend TWO HOURS waiting on […]

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