<p>Although this is a book about life as a flight attendant with the world&rsquo;s most iconic and glamorous airline, Pan American World Airways, it is not just a chronology of airborne events.&nbsp;Instead it begins with Betty Riegel&rsquo;s&nbsp;description of leaving her home in the middle of the night, clutching her teddy and running with her Mother to an air raid shelter during war torn London.&nbsp;From humble working-class roots, growing up with a mother who struggled to make ends meet and a father away at war, she had always dreamed of bigger things.&nbsp;<br />
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After responding to an ad in the local newspaper, she secured herself an interview for the Pan Am training program and at just twenty-two years old was selected from thousands of eager young British women to begin a career that would change the course of her life. Betty said goodbye to everything she knew and boarded a plane to New York, a city full of noise, towering sky&shy;scrapers, and promise.&nbsp;<br />
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Under the watchful eye of her &ldquo;housemother,&rdquo; Dottie, Betty mastered the art of being the perfect Pan Am stewardess&mdash;everything from faultless et&shy;iquette, geography, and safety to seamless makeup application, charming influential passengers, and preparing five-course Parisian cuisine at 37,000 feet. But no amount of training could have prepared her for the roller coaster of life in the air.&nbsp;</p><p>Betty&rsquo;s airline encounters include a white rhinoceros and a dance with an Arabian price in the first-class galley of a Boeing 707.&nbsp;Some of her off-duty adventures include dating Japan&rsquo;s &ldquo;Elvis&rdquo;, going on an African safari date with an&nbsp;English big game hunter and learning from a London clairvoyant of the precise description of her destined husband!</p><p><em>Up in the Air</em>&nbsp;charts the grueling yet fabulous life aboard the most iconic airline there has ever been and how a young woman from Essex opened her eyes to the world and lived her dream.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>