Flight Attendant

Heather Poole is the fly-and-tell queen of the skies. She wrote about her 15 years and counting as a flight attendant in her book "Cruising Attitude," but I follow her on Twitter (she's a prolific tweeter) and always find the tidbits she shares about life in the sky enlightening. An example: "Of all the drinks we serve, Diet Coke takes the most time to pour - the fizz takes forever to settle at 35,000 feet. In the time it takes me to pour a single cup of Diet Coke, I can serve three passengers a different beverage.

Flying is misery for many Americans. You've got those annoying security lines, the cramped seating and the jacked-up prices for a paltry bag of pretzels. But today's news from the skies suggests that passengers aren't the only parties fed up with air travel. American Eagle flight attendant Jose Serrano was removed from a plane in New York City this week after allegedly lashing out at passengers (a loss of composure caught on video) and challenging them to leave the plane -- if they dared.  The passengers were irate because the plane had been delayed for five hours by bad weather at LaGuardia Airport.

Six people were hospitalized earlier this week when a New York-bound United Airlines flight hit violent turbulence and was forced to make an emergency landing in western Louisiana. On Thursday, one flight attendant remained in serious condition. The Boeing 737 took off from Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport on Tuesday evening. Half an hour into the flight, as the crew prepared the beverage cart, the plane hit winds and rain 22,000 feet above eastern Texas. Flight attendants and passengers who weren't secured by seat belts slammed into the ceiling, then the floor, officials said.

WASHINGTON - The crowded US Airways flight from Paris to Charlotte, N.C., had just reached the northeastern tip of Canada when one of the passengers, a French citizen who was born in Cameroon, handed a flight attendant a cryptic note that said she had something hidden inside her body. Alarmed that the woman could be carrying a surgically implanted bomb, the crew notified authorities. U.S. f ighter jets were scrambled, and the pilot was told to make an emergency landing in Bangor, Maine.

In Catharine Hamm's column "Causing a Stink on the Airplane" [On the Spot, April 8] regarding the appropriate place on an airplane to change a baby's diaper, the issue of hygiene was not addressed. I am appalled that the cabin crew would permit a baby to be changed on a passenger seat. I, for one, would dread being the person on the next flight to sit there. After all, not only can you not avoid touching surfaces that most certainly have been contaminated, this is the place where you will be served refreshments or, on a long flight in business or first class, a full meal.

Paging Samuel L. Jackson! No snakes this time, but authorities are grappling with the best way to handle bats on a plane. OK, just one bat. But still, it's not the type of thing one expects to read about in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a bulletin produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It may sound more like a movie than a true public health issue, but this report is indeed based on actual events. At 6:45 a.m. on Aug. 5, a flight took off from Madison, Wis., with 50 passengers, two pilots and one flight attendant on board.

A Jet Blue pilot who began ranting and acting erratically as his flight headed from New York to Las Vegas -- forcing the co-pilot to lock him out of the cockpit and make an emergency landing -- has been described as a seemingly content family man who once hoped to be an astronaut. Jet Blue identified the pilot as Clayton Osbon, who lives in Georgia but who maintains an apartment in the New York City borough of Queens because his flying base is New York. In a statement Tuesday night , it said that the captain of Flight 191 was receiving medical treatment.

If you suffer from a fear of flying, here's something that might calm your nerves: The first 11 months of 2011 were the safest period for commercial air travel on record. The global accident rate for January through November was 22% better than the same time last year and marked the safest period since a United Nations aviation agency began collecting data in 1945, according to the International Air Transport Assn., an airline trade group that issued a report based on the U.N. data.

Show of hands: How many think Alec Baldwin or anyone should be able to play electronic games while waiting on the runway? Poll Position , a polling and social media company, asked that very question Sunday via phone of 1,356 registered voters nationwide. The results: --44 percent said no --38 percent said yes--18 percent had no opinion But when you look at different age groups of people polled, responses differ greatly. Seventy percent of 18- to 29-year-olds said passengers should be allowed to play games while waiting to take off while 56 percent of respondents 65 and older said no. Baldwin was kicked off an American Airlines flight last Tuesday apparently because he refused to turn off his electronic device and stop playing Words With Friends.

A roundup of entertainment headlines for Thursday. Lindsay Lohan's Playboy cover is out there for the world to see, just before the rest of Lindsay Lohan is out there for the world to see. ( Los Angeles Times ) Will Ryan Seacrest replace Matt Lauer on "Today"? ( Wall Street Journal ) "The Book of Mormon" is coming to L.A. in September 2012. ( Los Angeles Times ) Coldplay announced its first North American tour in nearly three years, including two dates at the Hollywood Bowl.