Dark Side of the Ring returned this week, commencing the second half of its third season. Seven more topics will be covered between now and the end of the season, kicking off with the infamous Plane Ride From Hell this past Thursday. Snippets of what happened on that trip have been told in interviews and on podcasts over the years, painting it to be a somewhat light-hearted affair. Dark Side's extensive coverage of the topic confirms that it was anything but.

Flying To Europe

WWE hired a company called Sports Jet so that Superstars competing on a European tour could travel in luxury. Heidi Doyle, a flight attendant working for Sports Jet at the time, explains that the flight from the US to Germany was an uneventful one. She and other attendants even spent time with the wrestlers between shows, going out with them for drinks in Europe.

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The tour ends in London where WWE holds a PPV, Insurrextion. Since the show took place on Saturday and the wrestlers needed to be back in the US for Raw on Monday, they fly back almost right away. However, due to weather issues in Connecticut, the flight is delayed. Not by an hour, as most onboard expected, but for seven hours.

During that seven-hour period that the flight wasn't allowed to take off, Doyle reveals the wrestlers on board drank their way through three drinks carts. In her entire time working as a flight attendant, both before and since The Plane Ride From Hell, she has never experienced passengers finishing off one cart before a flight takes off, let alone finishing three.

H-Bombing Hayes

The wrestlers on board, or at least some of them, weren't limiting themselves to alcohol alone. Former WWE referee Mike Chioda, who was one of many on the flight, runs through some of the prescription drugs that were being taken too. Some were also taking them unknowingly, as an act known in wrestling as “h-bombing” was going on. H-bombing is where a wrestler would drop a Halcion pill into someone's drink without them realizing it.

Wrestlers on the flight suspect that's what happened to Michael Hayes. For no reason at all, an intoxicated Hayes got up and punched JBL while he was sleeping, reopening a wound he had suffered at Insurrextion over the weekend. JBL reacted by knocking Hayes out, rendering him unconscious for the rest of the flight. Sean Waltman, better known to some wrestling fans as X-Pac, cut Hayes' ponytail off while he was sleeping. It turned up in a sandwich bag stapled to the locker room door at Raw the following Monday.

Curt Hennig vs. Brock Lesnar

Perhaps the scariest thing to happen on the flight, and the story that has been told the most over the years, is the fight between Curt Hennig and Brock Lesnar. It started when Hennig sprayed shaving cream on Lesnar's head and slapped it. Lesnar reacted by chasing Hennig and tackling him. The two of them then proceeded to brawl through the plane, breaking seats, overhead bins, and whatever else was in their way as they went.

The scariest moment of all came when they started to repeatedly collide with the plane's emergency door. While Doyle says she's fairly certain the two of them couldn't have crashed through the door, she does say their brawling could have broken the aircraft's fuselage. That would have resulted in the pilot needing to perform an emergency landing, and with nowhere to land other than the Atlantic Ocean, who knows what might have happened.

Goldust Starts To Sing

The Lesnar story leads to another about The Beast from Terri Runnels, a former female WWE Superstar who tried her best to stay out of everything going on aboard the flight. Runnels alleges Lesnar flashed her during the European tour. She ignored the incident, acting like she hadn't seen anything. Her ex-husband at the time Dustin Rhodes, WWE's Goldust, also told her to just ignore it.

Runnels goes on to speak of the next incident to take place aboard the Plane Ride From Hell. An intoxicated Rhodes commandeered the plane's PA system and started to sing. Having recently broken up, the ballad Rhodes was singing was clearly aimed at Runnels. Jim Ross eventually intervened, taking back the PA system and telling Rhodes to sit his ass down.

Ric Flair's Open Robe

Ric Flair was aboard the flight and commented this week that he was somewhat worried about this episode of Dark Side airing. Doyle's account of what happened between the two of them may explain why. Flair was walking up and down the plane with his robe open and nothing on underneath. According to Doyle, Flair came back into the galley at one point, robe open and pushing her up against the wall. Doyle alleges that Flair was attempting to force her into doing something she didn't want to do, trying to make her touch him. While Flair wasn't a part of the episode, he has denied these allegations in the past.

The flight didn't improve for Doyle who also recalls an unpleasant interaction with Scott Hall. While passing Hall, Doyle says he grabbed her and pulled her in close, ripping buttons off her shirt in the process. Doyle says she can remember some of the things he said to her, which included his intention to lick her. Hall, who was also not on the episode outside of a short voice clip, has no recollection of anything that happened on the flight to this day. Although addicted to alcohol and various other things at the time, he believes he was h-bombed by someone.

Firings, Fines, And Lawsuits

The issues on the plane didn't just disappear once the wrestlers and attendants onboard landed and could go about their lives once again. Hennig and Hall paid the price, both getting fired for what happened on the flight. JR says he had the option to also fire Rhodes but chose to fine him instead. When asked why Flair went unpunished for his role in what happened on the plane, JR appears defeated. He readily admits that the fact Flair was a “made man” is likely why he went unpunished.

Doyle and another attendant who worked on the flight both filed lawsuits against WWE, eventually receiving out-of-court settlements. Doyle still appears to be affected by what happened that weekend to this day, almost 20 years later. She says she was nervous about being a part of Dark Side's retelling of the Plane Ride From Hell due to how she may be treated online afterward. However, she says if it makes someone like Flair realize they put someone in an uncomfortable position but didn't realize at the time, it'll be worth it.