'I'm one of those chumps who joined the mile-high club. Here's how it happened.'

This morning I read a statistic that thumped me.

I wish I could say it was about endangered elephants. Or levels of global warming. Or world hunger.

But it was about plane sex.

So here goes. The statistic was: Five per cent of people have done the dirty on a flight.

The reason I was so rattled… is because I am one of those fools. All of a sudden, I realised I’d been fed a filthy lie and fell for it. Call me naive, but the amount of times the “mile-high club” came up in dinner conversation with friends or I’d read about it in the media, I would have sworn that figure was closer to twenty-five per cent. Anybody who’s anybody was doing it. Or so I thought.

I’m from the Cosmo generation, sold this idea that vanilla sex = bad and spicy sex = good. The mile-high club is treated as some kind of holy grail. How can you consider yourself adventurous in the bedroom if you haven’t bonked in a plane bathroom? At the time, it made perfect sense. My partner and I, young and dumb (and horny), convinced ourselves we just had to do it.

So we did. And it was quite possibly the worst sexual experience of my life.

The first thing you’re probably going to assume is that we were on a long-haul flight to Europe and we snuck into the bathroom while the plane was shrouded in darkness and everybody was asleep.

You’re wrong.

We were on a two-hour flight to Ho Chi Minh.

But as soon as we boarded the flight, we could feel it in our loins: this this was our moment.

We were given two seats right at the back of the cabin, with no one else beside us. The bathroom was basically adjacent to us, only about six footsteps away. The sex gods were giving us lemons. It was our turn to make the lemonade.

We shot each other knowing glances and quickly hatched a plan. The only way we’d actually pull this off without chickening out would be to get it done right away. Like ripping off a band-aid.

We very strategically placed our jackets on our laps and for the entire length of the take-off we were, uh, using our hands to get each other warmed up . Preparation is key, people. Then, there was a ping and the seatbelt light turned off. It was go-time.

We checked the aisles. The flight attendants were nowhere to be seen – they were huddled away preparing the drinks service. I quietly prayed a fellow passenger would exit their seat and ruin our stupid plan. Nobody got up.

We zipped up our jeans. I channelled my inner ninja and made a mad dash for the toilet cubicle. Thirty seconds later, there was a knock. Of course, I momentarily panicked, but then came the “It’s me”.

I opened up the door and we madly undressed, moving with such urgency it was like our lives depended on this one, awful shag. And yes, I mean awful.

There is nothing glamorous about having sex in the precise spot a man named Gary had relieved his bowels moments earlier. These teeny-tiny rooms are not designed to fit two adult humans, and yet there we were, squishing our bodies Tetris-style into a deeply uncomfortable position. And don’t even get me started on the lighting.

I won’t go into the exact details of the sex itself, but let’s just say my partner was seated, and it was clumsy, silent and – thankfully – quick.

Are people really having sex on planes? The Mamamia Out Loud team investigate.

We cleaned up, left the bathroom separately. Feeling slightly ashamed, a little exhilarated, very amused and definitely not satisfied. But, the mile-high club membership was ours, at last. Mission. Accomplished.

In the five years since, we have shared many private giggles remembering that sky-high romp. And I thought we were surrounded by many, many couples secretly chuckling about the same experiences.

But today, I discovered I was just a rare chump who fell for the shiny mile-high club label.

And would I recommend it? Absolutely not.

So think of this as a cautionary tale. Don’t be a chump. There’s a reason sex is usually reserved for the bedroom.

Would you have sex on a plane? Tell us in the comments below.