Meet Kelly Kincaid, the flight attendant behind the Jetlagged comics

You can hardly look next to them while scrolling down the Facebook-timeline: the funny and playful cartoons of “Jetlagged” by Kelly Kincaid. Her twice-weekly cartoons are massively shared on social media, and one group in particular: the cabin crew community. It’s about time that aviation24.be ask Kelly, a flight attendant herself since 2007, some questions.

BART Kelly, when did you start drawing ?

KELLY “Growing up I was always drawing. I loved to write too, mostly in my journal, but I’d create cartoons about my childhood cats, my friends and odd jobs I had as a teenager. My mom kept a lot of Gary Larson around the house and that was a massive influence.

During my short furlough break in 2008 I began doing some soul searching. Well, actually, I started a house cleaning business to pay the bills. For the next 2 years I cleaned houses and flew after getting called back by my airline. Starting a business was attractive and fun (but, oddly, not the cleaning toilets part). So I asked myself if I had all the time in the world (which all of us do, really), what would I do? And I thought back to when I was a kid, when I used to draw. So I took some childhood advice and began to explore cartooning again. I started Jetlagged in 2012. And here we are!”

BART Your cartoons always create an “ah-yes” effect among flight attendants. They have the feeling that the situation in your cartoon has already been experienced in the past. How do your colleagues respond to your cartoons ?

KELLY “I fly for Alaska Airlines. I am in deep gratitude to this airline. My mom has been a flight attendant for them since I was 5 years old (and still is). I met my husband (also a flight attendant) through them and now I create cartoons people seem to enjoy because of the nature of my job. I love my airline, my job and the people I work with.

Never in a million years did I think Jetlagged would be so well known and so loved. People seem to really get a kick out of it. My family has been my biggest support and especially my husband Robert who helped me get started. We’re partners in it still, as he does all my bookkeeping for me. I’m mostly a one-woman show, but really it’s a two person operation.

When I fly with other crews who know me and what I do, I always get a wonderful, positive response. I get to hear a lot of stories and ideas from them, or I get to hear how something that happened during their day made them think of a Jetlagged cartoon. Better yet, I get to hear how they took a potentially negative situation and turned into something they could laugh at. That is my mission here: to inspire positive, funny perspectives.”

Jetlagged website – Jetlagged shop

First book: Airplane Mode
Second book: Jetway Reunion

Kelly signs all book copies when ordered from her site.

Kelly started a Patreon Page for fans to help support Jetlagged on a monthly basis (helps me purchase supplies like pens, paper, website upkeep, etc.).