Chrissy Teigen Reveals Her In-flight Pet Peeve, Go-to Snacks, and ‘Crazy Experiences’ She’s Had While Flying (Exclusive)

If there was an emergency on your plane and Chrissy Teigen was a fellow passenger, she thinks she could step in to land the aircraft. “I played a Microsoft Flight Simulator with my dad growing up, and so to me, I could land a plane,” she joked in an interview with Travel + Leisure earlier this month. “I’ve always been really interested in airplanes.” 

The model and television personality’s fascination with airplanes extends beyond the cockpit. As someone who has traveled a lot in her career, she has had her fair share of “crazy experiences” on planes. From emergency landings to oxygen masks dropping to harrowing turbulence (the “kind where you’re sobbing into your blanket”), “I have pretty much experienced it all,” Teigen said.

She even once took a flight to Japan, where she fell asleep eight hours into the journey, and when she woke up, the plane had returned to Los Angeles. “That was the longest flight to nowhere!”

A family photo from celebrating Easter in Venice, Italy.

Chrissy Teigen

Teigen says she is such a good sleeper on planes that she doesn’t even need to sit next to her husband, musician John Legend, on long flights. “I don’t talk! We can take an international flight and be separated. We’re not like ‘Oh, can you move for us?’”

Of course, there are some unavoidable obstacles to sleeping on planes—and one of Teigen’s in-flight pet peeves keeps her up. “I always feel like, for some reason, the person next to me needs to have their window open, staring at nothing, and then that beam of light when it’s an already dark cabin, just beaming in through the side. I’m like, ‘Why me? Why do I always get next to this person?’”

With Chrissy Teigen

Go-to drink order and snack on an airplane?

Ice water all day. I like to bring my own snacks. I really am into buying individual cups of nacho cheese sauce, which they sell at Ralph’s and Kroger. And it’s like the old-school cheese sauce that you would get at the movie theater, and I would just bring a little bag of tortilla chips. And that snack makes me so happy on an airplane, so happy.

Favorite hotel?

Oh, that’s so hard. Passalacqua in Lake Como would probably be my number one! Also, I love the 1 Hotel in Miami.

Greatest travel fear?

Dying in a plane crash.

Favorite business-class airline experience?

Emirates, absolutely without a doubt, is just beyond. It’s crazy. 

First thing you do when you walk into a hotel room?

I get into bed, and I am immediately in bed. I don’t care what time it is, I walk in, I make it colder, and then I get into bed. 

Ever the seasoned traveler, she takes mishaps in stride. But perhaps the worst thing to ever happen to her while flying actually occurred off the plane at the airport when she was traveling with her now-deceased bulldog, Puddy. During a flight to Los Angeles International Airport, she kept feeding him bread rolls, not really considering any potential digestive consequences until they made their way through the terminal.

“We got off the airplane, and all down the terminal, he pooped all the way down. It was pretty unbelievable. It would not stop. And I was so embarrassed! I was trying to pull him to the side, but I didn’t want people to think I was leaving the poop. So this man in a full suit jumped up from one of the gates and ran over, ran to the bathroom, got a ton of paper towels, and helped me clean like 30 feet of poop. And it was just the nicest, kindest thing that anyone’s ever done for me. And I literally could cry thinking about him again.” 

Chrissy and John with Luna and Miles at the famous St. Barths airport runway; on a date night in Italy.

Chrissy Teigen

Compared to that messy situation with her pup, flying with her four kids and Legend sounds like a piece of cake, and she’s learned some tips for making family travel easier. She says packing food ahead of time for your kids is the ultimate hack. “Pre-pack sandwiches for sure. You can think that your kid’s going to eat the chicken or eat whatever they serve, but they’re not going to eat it. I also pack a cup of noodles that just needs hot water added.” She also suggests bringing washi tape on a flight to stick on the windows and trays to keep toddlers entertained for hours. 

Teigen, who is producing an upcoming sitcom with David E. Kelly, says that of all the places she has traveled to, she would like to return to Lake Como in Italy. Until she and Legend make it back there for the delicious cuisine, the New York Times bestselling cookbook author channels her love of food into her culinary brand, Cravings. She just released a new line of pasta sauces as part of the brand, which are now available for national shipping and can be purchased at Sprouts Farmers Market.