All Aboard the Pink Flight

The Arrival

Pink. It's a color I associate with martinis, Hello Kitty, and Legally Blonde, but not an airplane. But then, as I step into the pre-party for the Air New Zealand trip known as the Pink Flight, I notice that there are a lot of things about this flight that you don't normally associate with air travel. After all, on what other plane ride would comedian Kathy Griffin be my flight's host, or a roster of drag queens serve as flight attendants?

"Air New Zealand is used to doing things differently, as you can see by tonight," says Jodi Miller, who handles marketing for the airline. She gestures to the party going on around us in what would normally be a quiet gate at the San Francisco airport. It's the sort of scene you'd normally see in a gay club -- a crowd of good-looking men, a well-stocked bar, drag queens milling about -- and that's exactly the intent. The plane's eventual destination is gay Mardi Gras in Sydney, Australia, and by putting on such a flamboyant flight, Air New Zealand hopes to capture a piece of the lucrative gay travel market.

Conceived by an Air New Zealand crew member, the inaugural Pink Flight took off last year from Auckland to Sydney. "We thought, well, that was pretty good -- but what about San Francisco to Sydney?" says Miller. Expanding on the concept to fill a 13-hour plane ride, Miller has put together a flight plan that could make even the characters from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert seem butch. In addition to Kathy and the drag queens, there are feather boas, an in-flight movie menu that promises a full assortment of gay classics, and a pink gift bag -- modeled after a 1950s bowling bag -- stuffed with skin products and pom-poms (and, it must be noted, a copy of The Advocate).

After a series of musical performances from our flight attendants (a group of New Zealand drag queens named Buckwheat, Miss Ribena, Tess Tickle, and Venus Mantrapp), the passengers gather at the far end of the gate, where Kathy Griffin stands, ready to take their ticket. "I'm like the fuckin' greeter at the Gap," she moans, cracking jokes in front of a group of cameramen (some shooting the star for the fourth season of her Bravo series My Life on the D-list). Griffin is quick with a quip until she's stymied by the passenger in front of me -- one of the few straight women attempting to board. "You're not a gay man!" she says.

The Plane

The plane is only one half to two thirds full, but the mood is still festive, and no one minds the extra leg room. There is one empty seat separating me from my closest neighbor, a blond 23-year-old journalist named Cameron who writes for Australia's DNA magazine. Cameron is quite intercontinental -- he names Brisbane and Madrid as his two homes, though this will be his first trip back to Australia since the last Mardi Gras.

Behind us is Mark, a self-proclaimed circuit party veteran from San Diego. "I've been to every circuit party in the U.S.," he tells us, and I'm convinced -- especially when a well-muscled flight attendant walks down the aisle and does a double take in front of Mark, claiming that they've met before. "Was it at gay Mardi Gras last year?" asks Mark. The flight attendant thinks for a bit. "No, it was on the Atlantis cruise ship!" That Mark gets around. His first gay Mardi Gras in Sydney was last year -- "It's the best in the world" -- and he said he immediately booked his ticket back the day after. He'd intended to fly Qantas, but the Air New Zealand tickets were considerably less expensive and offered the fun bonuses to boot.

I talk to unassuming Jordan, a man sitting by himself to my right. This will be Jordan's first gay Mardi Gras, and the rowdy Pink Flight pre-party has already opened his eyes. "When I first came in, I was a little shell-shocked," he admits. He recalls Buckwheat's vivid pre-flight performance of "One Night Only" from Dreamgirls. "She was in this gold, shiny mermaid dress," he says, then deadpanning: "She's not a small woman. It was a lot of shimmer."

As the plane takes off, the drag queens make their first sashay down the aisle, passing out incoming passenger cards and salacious come-ons. Even the flight's regular crew members aren't immune to the double entendres as the drag queens check to make sure seat belts are fastened with a lascivious "Nice and tight. Oh, we like it tight."

We also have our first celebrity sighting, according to Mark. "That's Kathy Griffin's assistant! She has her own fan club," he informs us. As Jessica walks down the aisle past us (in a fetching zebra-print blouse), Mark flags her down. "You're Kathy Griffin's assistant," he says. "You have your own fan club." She assents to the former, though she was unaware of the latter. This is her first time traveling to Sydney. "But I've seen it on The Real World," she hastens to add.