By: Santiago Miller
There is a specific kind of professional wisdom that only accumulates in the middle seat of a Tuesday morning flight from Chicago to Dallas, somewhere between the person in 14B who has been aggressively reclined since before takeoff and the person in 14D who is eating a tuna sandwich and has no apparent awareness that other human beings exist within a three-foot radius.
Brandon C. Blewett has spent more than a decade collecting that wisdom, departing on Mondays and returning on Thursdays with the regularity of a consulting career that eventually earned him Million Miler status with one major U.S. carrier and top-tier status with two others. How to Avoid Strangers on Airplanes is the book that emerges from all of those miles, and it is both a funny business book and a practical one.
Reading this book produces a specific kind of recognition that frequent business travelers may feel almost immediately and that anyone who has spent time in a modern airport can appreciate. Blewett’s taxonomy of annoying traveler archetypes, from the Gate Lice who crowd the boarding area long before their zone is called to the overhead bin abusers who seem to believe the laws of physics do not apply to their rolling luggage, is sharply observed and often funny in the way things are funny when they feel true.
Readers may recognize each archetype and immediately connect it to specific faces from their own travel history, which is part of what makes the book feel grounded in close observation.
But the book’s broader achievement, beyond the comic surface, is what Blewett does with those archetypes. The Six Habits of Highly Annoying Travelers are not only a catalogue of airport grievances. They become a mirror for behaviors that can also show up in professional environments, including entitlement, disrespect for shared resources, and the tendency to treat every situation as a competition for personal advantage.
Blewett makes those connections with a light touch that keeps the book feeling engaging rather than preachy. The result is career guidance that may stick because it arrives through humor rather than through another formal framework about leadership competencies.
The reflective questions woven through the book give readers a way to apply each observation to their own professional situation rather than simply enjoying the anecdotes and moving on. The practical career strategies on leadership, resilience, and knowing when to pivot reflect the insight of someone who has spent more than a decade navigating both literal and figurative turbulence in professional services and corporate development.
How to Avoid Strangers on Airplanes is a carry-on book that frequent business travelers may appreciate and a career guide that professionals interested in workplace behavior, leadership, and organizational dynamics may find useful. Blewett has written something that stands out in business literature: a book that can make readers laugh while also encouraging them to think more carefully about their own professional behavior.
If you have ever sat in a boarding gate watching the Gate Lice crowd the jetway and thought there had to be a book that makes sense of all of this, How to Avoid Strangers on Airplanes by Brandon C. Blewett is exactly that book, and it is funnier and more useful than you are expecting. Grab your copy on Amazon today and discover what a decade of Monday morning flights and Million Miler status finally taught one M&A executive about leadership, resilience, and the surprisingly deep connection between airport behavior and professional success.
