By: Michael Shank
Business insights can arrive from unexpected directions, and Brandon C. Blewett has spent more than a decade observing how airports and airplanes reveal human behavior under pressure. In those environments, people are tired, rushed, crowded, and often less guarded than they might be in a professional setting.
How to Avoid Strangers on Airplanes is the book that takes those observations seriously, wraps them in workplace-adjacent comedy, and uses the experience to explore leadership, resilience, and professional behavior through the lens of crowded boarding gates, full flights, and the rituals of business travel.
What makes the reading experience engaging is the quality of Blewett’s comic observation. He has Million Miler status with one major U.S. carrier and top-tier status with two others, which means he has spent significant time watching human nature in compressed and stressful conditions.
The Six Habits of Highly Annoying Travelers he identifies are rendered with specificity and comic precision. Each one feels less like a made-up character type and more like someone many travelers have encountered on a Monday morning flight. The Gate Lice are sharply observed. The overhead bin abusers are described with the kind of frustration frequent flyers may recognize immediately.
But Blewett is doing more than cataloging grievances. The book’s broader value becomes clear in the sections where he unpacks what each traveler archetype may reveal about professional behavior more generally.
The person who crowds the gate before their zone is called can resemble the person who ignores shared norms in meeting rooms, project teams, and organizational hierarchies. The overhead bin abuser can resemble the colleague who takes more than their share of organizational resources and seems surprised when others notice.
Those connections are made with enough wit that they feel like observations rather than lectures. That balance helps the book deliver its message without becoming overly formal or heavy-handed.
His practical career guidance, built from more than a decade in professional services consulting and his current role leading the M&A engine at a private equity-backed company, reflects grounded experience with organizational complexity. The sections on leadership, resilience, and knowing when to pivot are concise, direct, and shaped by lessons drawn from both business travel and professional life.
How to Avoid Strangers on Airplanes is the kind of business book that can sneak up on the reader. Someone may pick it up for the comedy and finish it with a clearer way to think about workplace behavior, leadership, and self-awareness. That combination gives the book its appeal.
If you spend more time in airports than in your own living room and have been waiting for someone to finally write the book that makes sense of everything you have been observing from the middle seat, How to Avoid Strangers on Airplanes by Brandon C. Blewett is waiting for you on Amazon. Pick up your copy today and get the most entertaining and most quietly instructive career guide currently available, one that will make your next flight considerably more enjoyable and your professional life considerably more self-aware.
