Elliott Hester offers up another fascinating glimpse into the glamorous world of air travel this week in the San Francisco Chronicle. The subject? The Mile-High Club.

“Throughout 16 years as a commercial flight attendant, I’ve witnessed numerous inductions into the Mile-High Club,” the author of “Plane Insanity” writes. “The liaisons are most common late at night when lights are low, crowds are minimal and the threat of discovery less likely. Some seek membership in the comfort of a passenger seat, cloaked by blankets and pillows and prodigious amounts of nerve. But most MHC wannabes are anointed in an aromatic airplane lavatory that only a contortionist could love.”

Then there’s the couple who, in 1998, aboard a South African Airways flight, “disrobed from the waist down and got busy in full view of other passengers,” he writes. “Mortified onlookers summoned flight attendants who, despite their best efforts, could not get the couple to disengage. Ultimately, the captain was forced to intervene. The high-flying exhibitionists eventually stopped, but only after the captain yelled, ‘This is not a shag house!’”