‘Crash landing’: Aussie comedian Michelle Brasier’s flight from hell

In this exclusive extract from her new book, Aussie comic Michelle Brasier recounts her terrifying near-death experience on a 2022 flight.

Heartbreaking and hilarious, Australian comedian Michelle Brasier’s memoir My Brother’s Ashes are in a Sandwich Bag moves between grief and joy, reminding us that life’s too short to be taken seriously.

In this exclusive extract from the newly-released book, Brasier recounts her terrifying experience on a 2022 flight from hell, while on her way home from the Edinburgh Comedy Festival …

That time I was in a plane crash

We’re on our way home from Edinburgh 2022. We’ve done Montreal. It’s been a real trip. And now we’re in a huge storm.

The plane is shaking. I’m okay with turbulence. And now we’re going in to land. Something is wrong with the weather, with the pilot, with the rain. We land, bounce, bounce again, and then the plane flips on its side. The wing which we are sitting on digs into the grass on the side of the runway and the plane corrects itself and takes off again into the worst turbulence I’ve experienced in my life.

It’s an American airline so it’s full of praying, crying, screaming Americans. Two people have heart attacks but the medical professionals on board can’t help; nobody can get out of their seats. I turn to Tim (Brasier’s partner, Tim Lancaster) and I say, ‘Ooh’.

I want to call my mum, but what would I say? I don’t want my story to be finished in fear. I don’t want my memoir to say, ‘She died afraid.’ I want people to think I was in the air so drunk on the free whisky that I didn’t even wake to die. That I was happy when I went.

Michelle Brasier's new book is out now.

Brasier’s OK with turbulence, but a plane “flipping on its side”? No thank you.

But I want Mum to know that I love her, so I take out my phone and type, ‘hey mum, love you’ because that’s a normal thing to message my mum. And because I am a wordsmith by trade, I save my final haunting poem for the group chat.

‘Love you girlies!’ Love. You. Girlies.

Is that to be my legacy?

The plane levels out and the pilot finally speaks.

‘Ha ha! Bit of a crash landing there! As far as plane crashes go, folks, that one was a great success. It’s not safe to land in Washington; we know that from experience now. We need to get this wing checked out and some passengers in medical distress on the ground, so we are circling to Baltimore and we will be on the ground in ten minutes.’

The pilot actually said that.

We land in Baltimore; everybody claps and hugs. A fire truck zooms over to the plane. Paramedics board.

‘Okay,’ the pilot says, ‘we are opening the forward doors for some paramedics to board the plane. Now, please do not rush the doors. We are not cleared to enter the country at this port. I repeat, please do not rush the doors.’

America.

Brasier’s pilot deemed their crash landing a “great success.”

We sit on the tarmac for five hours. Strangers talk and comfort the people who are afraid and alone. A woman that can only be described as ‘from Love Island’ appears in my personal space.

‘Ohmygodwereyouscared?’ she asks in her Love Island accent. And I fall in love with her immediately. Her huge lips and her fake eyelashes and her dyed jet-black hair and bottle-bronzed skin. She is brilliant. ‘I was so scared. I’ve got a connecting flight to Florida. Jacksonville. I’m meeting this guy, never met him before.’

I’m glad she’s missed her connecting flight.

I’m grateful not to have died in a plane crash. Though I suppose it would have been great for my legacy. Good for book sales, maybe. I got on a plane once with Wil Anderson and I love Wil but when I saw him I thought, ‘Oh great, if this plane goes down, I’m not even the headline.’

This is an extract from Michelle Brasier’s memoir My Brother’s Ashes are in a Sandwich Bag, published by Ultimo Press ($36.99).

Originally published as ‘Crash landing’: Aussie comedian Michelle Brasier’s flight from hell