The mile-high club is slangfor the people who have had sexual intercourseon board an aircraftin flight. An alleged explanation for wanting to perform the act is the supposed vibration of the plane. Some say they have fantasies about pilots or flight attendants, or a fetish about planes themselves. For others, the appeal of joining the mile-high club is the thrill of doing something taboo and the thrill of the risk of being discovered.
History
An early reference to the concept is found in the betting book for Brooks's, a London gentlemen's club. The 1785 entry reads: "Ld. Cholmondeley has given two guineas to Ld. Derby, to receive 500 Gs whenever his lordship has sex with a woman in a balloon one thousand yards from the Earth." During the First World War, German Ace Oswald Boelcke was disciplined by superiors for taking a nurse up in the cockpit of his fighter, allegedly becoming the first person to qualify as a member of the club. Pilot/engineer Lawrence Sperry and socialite Dorothy Rice Sims have been described as the first persons to engage in sex while flying in an airplane; the two flew in an autopilot-equipped Curtiss Flying Boat near New York in November 1916. The American transportation authorityNTSB reports one case in which sexual activity is at least partly responsible for an aviation accident. In November 2007, the BBC reported a story headlined "Airline Bans A380 Mile-High Club". The Airbus A380 allows double beds to be installed in the first-class cabin, but Singapore Airlines' cabins are not soundproof; shortly after installing the new seats/beds, the airline requested that first-class travelers respect other passengers.
Prevalence
In one survey in the 2010s, 9% of Americans claimed to have had a sexual encounter in an airplane seat, 17% in the airplane bathroom, 5% with a stranger on an airplane, and 3% with a crew member.
Noted instances
Some incidents of people attempting sexual activity on planes have become popularly known:
Richard Branson, the British billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Virgin Group, including Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia, claimed that he joined the mile-high club at age 19 in the plane's lavatory. Afterwards, he found out that his partner in the act was married, and the two had no relationship beyond the encounter in the plane.
In October 1999, two passengers of an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Manchester were arrested after engaging in "sex acts" in front of other passengers in the business class section of the aircraft. Both lost their jobs after the press storm following the incident.
A 2005 British Airways flight from London to Jamaica diverted to Bermuda when Trevor Blake and Nicola Fitzpatrick, a couple on board, who had possibly been intoxicated even before consuming more beer and wine on the plane, threatened flight attendants after they told them to return to their seats when the attendants found Fitzpatrick giving a lap dance to Blake in a crew jump seat; the two ultimately had to be physically confined to their seats. The two claimed later they had already had sex twice in the aircraft lavatory before their return to the U.K. Blake was sentenced to prison and Fitzpatrick was sentenced to community service.
In late 2006, a couple was arrested in part for refusing to stop overt sexual activity on a flight in a case that received widespread media attention. The couple's lawyer claimed that the couple were not engaging in sexual activity, but that the man was sick and resting his head on the woman's lap.
In early 2007, a Qantas flight attendant's employment was terminated after having sex with actor Ralph Fiennes in a business class lavatory during a flight from Darwin to Mumbai. The attendant denied the allegation at first, but subsequently admitted the encounter in an interview with the British Daily Mail tabloid. She also stated that she stayed with Fiennes at his Mumbai hotel.
Legality
The BBC ran an article investigating whether sex on a plane was legal. Their conclusion was that it would depend on many factors, such as whether or not the act occurred in sight of others. If British law applied, for example, it may constitute sex in a lavatory to which the public has access, contrary to Sexual Offences Act 2003 s.71, with a maximum 6-month term. Also, for international flights, the law could vary depending on departure and destination cities and the nation of the carrier airline, as well as the country of registration of the aircraft, and possibly the citizenship of the people involved. In January 2011, the United Kingdom's aviation regulator body, the Civil Aviation Authority, refused to recertify Mile-High Flights, an air charter company located in Gloucestershire, for allowing its passengers to have sex while in-flight.
Charter flights
Some commercial enterprises cash in on people's interest in joining the "club" by offering special charter flights designed for the purpose.
