Hare Force One
Playboy Sweden|April 2019

The Playboy empire hit cruising altitude in the early 1970s with the Big Bunny, a private jetliner that embodied luxury and indulgence —and, on occasion, embraced charity

Lorraine Boissoneault
Hare Force One

IT WAS THE FRIED CHICKEN that scared flight attendant Gwen Wong Wayne the most. Not the turbulence, or the passengers who drank one too many glasses of wine, but the dish she and other Jet Bunnies prepared from scratch for their boss, Hugh Hefner, on the Big Bunny, h is p ersonal plane. The recipe was simple: chicken pieces, a handful of flour, Lawry’s seasoning salt, garlic powder and dried parsley, all shaken together in an air-sickness bag and then fried. The location — a tiny forward galley in a DC-9 jet flying at 30,000 feet and cruising at a speed of 565 miles an hour — was not. Decades after her stint in the skies, Wayne says she always prayed they wouldn’t hit an air pocket that might jolt the plane and send hot oil spattering.

“He liked to eat certain things,” Wayne remembers about Hefner, whose tastes, when it came to food, were famously consistent and unadventurous. Boxes of Twinkies were stashed so they’d never run out on long flights. A bottle of Pepsi had to be waiting for Hefner when he boarded (to be refreshed every hour) and a glass of cold milk served with his meal. Meal preparation was the only nerve-racking part for Wayne, a Playmate (April 1967) who had been working at the Los Angeles Playboy Club when she traded in her ears for wings and became a Jet Bunny.

“Was it a hard job? At times it was, but also it was something that was just…almost like you have to pinch yourself to know that this is real,” Wayne says.

This story is from the April 2019 edition of Playboy Sweden.

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This story is from the April 2019 edition of Playboy Sweden.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.