Not quite the Mile High Club

Romance is in the air – and sometimes in the airport, according to an online flight shopping service.

About one in 10 American air travellers have admitted having sex of some kind at an airport, compared with about 8 per cent who are members of the Mile High Club.

Of those who had some sort of ‘‘sexual encounter’’, 42 per cent said it took place in the toilets, while 28 per cent got busy in ‘‘storage cupboards’’ and 14 per cent ‘‘under a coat’’. Twelve per cent said they had coupled in the VIP lounge.

Seventeen per cent of the respondents claimed to have been caught in the act by airport staff.

The survey is the work of US.Jetcost.com, which tallied the results from 4915 Americans aged 18 or older who had flown at least once in the past two years. Threequarters of them said they had some free time in the airport, so the website followed up to learn how that downtime was used.

Of those respondents who found romance, the majority engaged in sex with their travelling partner (87 per cent). Only 5 per cent hooked up with a stranger.

By comparison, flight attendants with Norwegian told Bloomberg News that Mile High Club inductees appeared on their flights about once a month.

The estimated success rate was about 30 per cent, and it was not uncommon to see people bolting for the lavatories who appeared to have been mere strangers when they took their seats, the flight attendants said.

Most respondents in the airport survey were content to fill their spare time by shopping in the terminal (54 per cent), having a drink or getting something to eat (67 per cent), playing games on a smartphone or some other device (41 per cent), streaming TV shows and movies (39 per cent), reading (25 per cent), and reading emails (11 per cent).