Stories of inflight sex are hardly newsworthy in and of themselves. They’ve been going on since November 1916, when a pilot took up a woman who wasn’t his wife in a Curtiss Flying Boat C‑2 over Long Island.
They put the plane on auto-pilot — which existed back then! — but bumped and disengaged it, causing the plan to fall into the bay. They were rescued… naked.
In modern times the idea usually goes like this: one person gets up to go to the lavatory. The other stays at their seat for a few more moments, and then gets up hoping nobody notices that they join in and that the other person hasn’t gone back to their seats.
Joining the mile high club happens less frequently than you’d think because:
- There’s nothing sexy about an airplane lavatory (except on Emirates and Qatar)
- There’s usually a line for the lavatory, so you won’t go unnoticed
Qatar Airways Airbus A380 First Class Lavatory
And mile high club incidents are only newsworthy when they involve a celebrity or getting caught in spectacular fashion — like the cheating couple filmed at their seats on an ultra low cost carrier (when the video went viral worldwide their antics were no longer secret) or the supermodel indignant that her privacy is violated when other passengers watch her have sex with her girlfriend at her seat .
One incident that really did stand out happened on a Sunday Delta flight from Los Angeles to Detroit because the man and woman apparently had never met prior to the flight. They didn’t know each other and weren’t traveling together. The 28 year old man was connecting on to Miami, and the 48 year old woman was headed to Nashville.
She gave him oral sex at their seats.Delta refused comment.
I guess that happens to people, they meet someone and that person is so immediately attracted to them that they just have to have sex on the spot in public wherever they are. Has that happened to you?
Nope.
You mean to say there are people this doesn’t happen to? That’s hard to believe. But it’s good these folks got arrested in Detroit, where the courtroom staff have nothing to do but solve sudoku puzzles and the jury pools spend hours throwing paper airplanes at each other and shooting spitballs at the bailiffs.
Gosh – are you serious? It happens to me all the time! My wife and I were set to fly on Singapore JFK to FRA in their First Class Suites. I showed my business partner the photos of the middle seats wit h partition removed and roses on the bed and he asked me if I thought I was going to get lucky? Lucky? I told him I can’t have sex when my grandkids are sleeping over!
ho hum
I think sex is the last thing on most people’s minds when they fly — especially in coach. It’s hard for me to imagine a worst place for people to “do it.” That said, hormones seem to sometimes kick in, and we have “incidents” like the one on Delta this week. While the participants often seem to get “hassled” after the encounter, they don’t seem to get charged with any crimes. I tend to think that’s a bad thing. I think we want to discourage this type of behavior. Oh, I don’t really care what you do in the lav (as long as you’re not preventing me from using it for “ordinary” purposes), but I really don’t want to encounter this behavior in the seats. And I think the vast majority of folks would agree with me on that. If there are no consequences to this misbehavior, I suspect we’ll see more of it in the future. That’s not a good thing.
Yea, this article really contributes to the discussion of award travel…..
@iahphx — I certainly agree I “don’t want to encounter this behavior” but I disagree with your punitive attitude. There’s already social stigma (at least among non-trashy people) against the behavior, and I see no need to burden the justice system with stuff like this.