Interesting conversations on an airplane

[wannabe]

Yes, I’m starting another thread in hopes of lightening things a bit. I just realized that it’s going to be a long time before I ever allow myself to get on an airplane again. I’m sure a lot of people are in the same boat. So, we might as well talk about the good old days. Do you have any stories of any interesting people or conversations that you’ve had on an airplane?

I’ll start. I have two:

The first was when I sat next to another engineer. After finding out that he was a mechanical engineer too, I asked what kind of work he did for a living. He said that he was a professional expert witness on design liability lawsuits. He mentioned that the one that he was working on at the time involved some mechanical rollers that essentially thinned sheets of metal. The employees found that the easiest way to clean the rollers was to just turn it on and wipe the rollers as they turned. Well, that went as bad as one would expect that it would, and an employee eventually got his arm pulled into the machine until he got pulled in far enough to snap his neck. The story was bad enough. The guy had pictures with him of the guy handing dead in the rolling press!!!!

Story #2: Same flight a month later. A beautiful woman ended up getting stuck with the middle seat next to me. I naturally struck up a conversation and asked her what she did for a living. She mentioned that she was a dancer. I replied that I did a lot of dance photography mostly of professional ballet companies and proceeded to show her my portfolio on my iPad. After we take off, she pulls out her laptop to show me pics from random photo shoots that she had participated in. After 5 or 6 pics, we get through an entire set of nudes. The first thought that popped in my head was, “Hmmm, beautiful women never show me nude pics of themselves when I tell them that I’m an engineer...”

OK, let’s hear your stories.

 

[rodr]

I'm not very chatty, but for some reason will go out of my way to talk with attractive women. On one occasion the woman spoke only a foreign language which I eventually figured out was Portuguese. So I pulled up a translation app on my phone and carried on a bit with that.

My wife was sitting on the other side of me. She took it pretty well. :laughing

 

[Butch]

I'm not very chatty, but for some reason will go out of my way to talk with attractive women...

Me neither. There are so many things that did not happen.

 

[dravnx]

I was on a flight from Tokyo to Seattle. Middle seat of the row of an L1011. This aircraft has 3, 5, 3 rows. Anyway, I look around me and I'm surrounded by these absolutely gorgeous, model looking women. I think to myself, self, this is going to be fun. I'm a flirt and love chatting 'em up. As I'm sitting there, I notice that most of them don't look too good. Like the I drank too much last night and had to get up way too early not good. As soon as the wheels leave the ground, the ladies on either side of me grab the little bags and start blowing chunks. They moaned and blew chunks for 11 hours.

 

[Abacinator]

When I'm on a plane I just want to be left the fuck alone :laughing

 

[wannabe]

I was on a flight from Tokyo to Seattle. Middle seat of the row of an L1011. This aircraft has 3, 5, 3 rows. Anyway, I look around me and I'm surrounded by these absolutely gorgeous, model looking women. I think to myself, self, this is going to be fun. I'm a flirt and love chatting 'em up. As I'm sitting there, I notice that most of them don't look too good. Like the I drank too much last night and had to get up way too early not good. As soon as the wheels leave the ground, the ladies on either side of me grab the little bags and start blowing chunks. They moaned and blew chunks for 11 hours.

Hahahahaha! That’s one of those “just my luck” kind of stories!

 

[wannabe]

I also remember a time when Southwest has two rows facing each other on the emergency exit. I sat there, and a couple of beautiful women also sat in the row of 6 seats. (3 facing forward and 3 facing backward.) Then a mom and her young son (must have been 3 or 4 years old) sat with us, and the kid starts to not be happy.

I was a bit bummed that I was not gonna be able to chat up the cute women who sat next to me, so I decided to make the best of it and pulled out a sharpie and drew eyes and a mouth of a couple of BARF bags and started BARF Bag puppet theater for the kid. That made the flight feel a lot shorter, and his mom mouthed a “thank you” to me.

The cute woman sitting next to me ended up taking one of my barf puppets as a souvenir. I didn’t get her number, but I like to think that the puppet reminded her of me. :teeth

 

[Eldritch]

I have always kept it very DL on planes with the exception of one trip where me and a buddy got on a quick flight from SNA to SFO pretty shitfaced. I got seated next to a very attractive woman on her way to Boston, there was a fun laugh and flirt for like an hour, and that was it.

Usually when I fly it is with a pack of friends and we book seats together, but we tend to stay quiet and chill the whole flight.

 

[Enchanter]

Last to arrive at the gate by a large margin. They were paging me in the terminal as I was running to the gate.

I don't have assigned seating (Southwest I think). I'm happy to have made the flight, but thinking I'm going to be screwed with my seat. I'm shocked to find the only empty seat is on row 6 and it's a window! There are 2 women in the row, both in their mid to late seventies. "Excuse me young ladies, may I please squeeze by you?" The both graciously got up, and I slid in.

As soon as I sat down, the woman in the aisle leans over and says that they were very happy that I was sitting there, and they were afraid they were going to get someone rude and smelly.

They asked me what I was doing in Atlanta, and I told them that I was there for annual re-certification as a motorcycle training instructor. The women in the aisle seat elbows the one in the middle and says "I bet you like him even more now."

I'm puzzled and the woman in the middle seat says that she and her family are lifelong motorcyclists and she recently had to stop due to her frail bones. We chatted about the bikes we've owned, and she asked me what my favorite bike was. I told her it was my R/W/B 1993 CBR900RR and she lit up! "My husband owned that one too, and I loved it."

Of course I ask her what bike was her favorite. "My husband has an 1100 Honda that wasn't officially imported into the US, and I think it is the most beautiful bike I've seen." I responded "You guys have a CB1100R?" She lit up again! She was surprised I knew what it was.

We began showing each other images on our phones. I was swiping quickly past the cars to get to the bikes and she stopped me. "Did I see a Corvette?" I swipe back, and she says that she daily drives a red corvette. She said that she was disappointed that she was unable to drive a manual transmission anymore, but was enjoying the car in-spite of that.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a DVD of "Why We Ride" and said that she'd like to give it to me. I was grateful and told her that I had one already. She then told me that parts of it were filmed in her husbands shop, and that she carries a copy with her to give away to people she meets.

The flight ended too quickly. They stayed on the flight (to LA) when we landed in SJ. I gave her a business card but never heard from her again.

 

[wannabe]

^^^Thats awesome!

 

[Pushrod]

The owner of the company I worked for dragged me to Dayton on a business trip. He is single, I was (am) not. This guy was a go-getter. Could talk an eskimo into buying a freezer kind of guy.

He got seated next to a lady who showed an immediate interest in him.

My perspective of my boss changed as I watched him, at sixty, turn into a clumsy, shy, awkward teenager who, after thirty minutes of a two hour flight, couldn't form a coherent sentence nor get a phone number.

Threatened to fire me if I told ANYONE about what I had witnessed. It took a year for him to get over it.

 

[Removed 3]

I was seated in the middle. The guy to the right of me seemed to have boarded with just a pen and writing pad. Not just any pad but my favorite quad ruled 4sq/in
:nerd


At some point, I just had to tell him how I prefer to use this when I'm putting ideas to paper. It's like the ideas just flow onto the paper. I didn't know how he was going to respond but surprisingly he said something similar that it allows him to organize his thoughts. I wasn't nosy enough to ask him what he did for a living. It was enough to know some other person felt the same way about a pad of blank paper

 

[UDRider]

On a flight to Georgia, the country, was seating next to some American woman and young Georgian woman. Apparently the Georgian woman was an aspiring journalist, and asked the American woman about He Who Shall Not Be Named. This is before he got elected. The American woman proceeded to lecture with the usual talking points of that time. I turned up the music and continued reading. Just like when at work, multi hour flight is no place to talk politics. Specially with a stranger.

 

[cheez]

These are some great stories. I have two.

One: I'm flying to Beijing from Vancouver, and I'm seated next to a VP from Caterpillar. He relates to me that he's heading to China to open another Caterpillar factory in China to produce products for the Asian market. He basically tells me that production quality is so low that they are manufacturing and testing the equipment in the USA, dismantling it to the point of being an 'unfinished good', and then importing it to China, where the only things they're allowed to do are the re-assembly and sale of the vehicle. Two things were surprising- that the Caterpillar name carried enough weight to get itself purchased by Chinese looking for quality products, and that they could make enough on the sale of the equipment to offset both that it was US-manufactured and twice-finished. I doubt that's held true in the years since- I'm sure they've gotten production up in those areas, if they're even still trying to sell into them in the face of Doosan and Hyundai and Jinan.

Two: I'm flying to Paris from Dallas, and meet a guy who's heading to Helsinki, but has an overnight in Paris. We hit it off, and wind up touring the city together, scoring some really great Moroccan hash together, and getting baked off our asses on the steps of Montmartre together. It was an excellent experience that left me too stoned to find my hotel easily.

 

[wazzuFreddo]

I usually read a book or listen to music on noise canceling headphones.

An airplane was the only time I had where I was not being bugged by the world around me and I got a couple hours to do nothing.

 

[aminalmutha]

I generally keep to myself, especially on flights more than an hour. I usually have headphones in, tablet on or eyes shut, making it usually pretty obvious for everyone to STFU.

I had one drunk asshole try to get me interested in his bullshit, which was irritating as shit.

One thing I have noticed is Southern MILFs like to chat when I’m on regional flights in the South. Nothing terribly interesting but they always wanna talk.

 

[Blankpage]

Since this thread is really about hot chicks on a plane I have a story. Had a short flight back in January on a Dash 8 or similar small thingy. Took my window seat and minutes later the hottest girl in the plane sat next to me.
When she sat down I was looking through my backpack for my tablet and headphones and crap and missed that initial opportunity to say hello. I gave her a look and a smile as I preparing my flick to watch. I think she might have been reading a book. We didn't say a word the whole flight : |

Pretty cool story though :teeth


I didn't win did I

 

[wannabe]

Back before the internet got huge, I sat next to a retired guy who was traveling the world. We spoke for a while, and I listened to his world travel stories. He mentioned that he sent out a monthly newsletter with stories of where he’d been and what he did that month. He said that he mailed them out to all the interesting people that he had met on his trip. He asked if I wanted to be added to the distribution. I said yes happily and gave him my mailing address.

I enjoyed reading his newsletter for a couple of years before I just stopped getting them. I never found out what happened to him.

That was the first travel blog that I ever read. I don’t care if it was a physical letter. The man was ahead of his time.

 

[littlebeast]

i hardly ever talk to other passengers (which didn’t really occur to me until i tried to remember an interesting conversation). one that came to mind though was on a flight from SFO to tokyo. i was next to this dude the entire flight and we didn’t say a word to each other. when we landed, we blew a tire on touchdown - and ended up sitting on the runway for about 2 hours (according to what we were told they shut down the runway while they inspected it and the plane for damage before they towed us to a gate). after about an hour and half the dude next to me says something along the lines of asking if tokyo was my destination (missing a connection?). we start talking and after some mundane ‘what brings you to tokyo, what do you do, who do you work for’ etc, it turned out he worked with my husband.

 

[aminalmutha]

Since this thread is really about hot chicks on a plane I have a story. Had a short flight back in January on a Dash 8 or similar small thingy. Took my window seat and minutes later the hottest girl in the plane sat next to me.
When she sat down I was looking through my backpack for my tablet and headphones and crap and missed that initial opportunity to say hello. I gave her a look and a smile as I preparing my flick to watch. I think she might have been reading a book. We didn't say a word the whole flight : |

Pretty cool story though :teeth


I didn't win did I

I have unfortunately witnessed numerous creeper dudes take advantage of the captive audience situation. Airplane isn’t a club, let’s all just STFU and get there.