Air Rage – Fight or Flight – Passengers behaving badly

Tuesday 17 June 2008

Nick's Travel Bytes

On long haul flights (and for the purposes of this piece we’ll talk about us lowly mortals in economy) there’s often the opportunity to play the 'who’s-my-next-door-neighbour?' game. In other words, the person you’re going to be stuck with for the next 12 hours.

In that time, you will probably find out if they have any table manners, whether or not they snore, and make judgements about them from the things they listen to, watch or read. For example, I once sat next a man wearing sunglasses throughout the flight who was reading Guns & Ammo magazine, so I know he was a serial killer.

You will know what they like to drink, how often they go to the loo and whether or not they are scared of flying. You might even get first hand experience of their hobbies; my uncle told me once about a flight somewhere in East Africa where twenty minutes after takeoff, the woman next to him sparked up a butane powered stove and started cooking. Perhaps she’d had the catering before.

In short, you will know more about them – and more intimate things – than many people you see on a regular basis. This makes the person or people you’re next to, very important indeed.

Pestering Passengers

I have been unlucky enough to have flown a lot – and I adopt the same strategy at all times: grim silence coupled with what I hope is a steely resolve (SAS with a hint of James Bond) that says: “You don’t bother me and I won’t bother you”. It doesn’t work though and I fall foul of the in-flight-neighbour all the time. For example, middle-aged women are forever keen to tell me about their families for hours on end – I have a passing interest in my own but that’s really where it stops.

I attract the unhinged too – a chap once asked me as we were flying at 35,000ft if I thought he could get a cheeseburger on board. I said I thought not and he then asked if there was anywhere else nearby that might serve him. Drunks gravitate towards me as well; keen to share their illicit booze and woeful stories in equal measure. Excitingly, I did once sit next to the Top Gear team on a flight to Edinburgh but Clarkson was wearing the expression I’ve strived so hard to perfect (with rather more success than me) and so I decided not to bother him. Other than that, I am generally doomed to suffer.

In-flight Incidents

I suppose I should count myself lucky though since I’ve only ever witnessed one violent incident in a plane and it was fairly minor. The Department for Transport publish figures for this kind of thing and during 2006-7, there were 2219 incidents reported by British carriers of which 58 were categorised by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) as being serious . Most of these seem to have been alcohol related and one can imagine a serious, drunken punch-up being a pretty frightening experience (with SAS/James Bond expression changing rapidly to Big Girl’s Blouse tears) but this kind of event is quite rare.

The good news though is that at no stage has any airliner itself ever been in danger due to this type of fracas – upsetting for passengers and crew members of course, but not actually life-threatening. Troublemakers take note though: the most serious offences can carry a maximum fine of £5,000 and/or 2 years imprisonment whilst other offences relating to unruly behaviour on board aircraft carry fines of up to £2,500.

Air Rage

Given long-haul flying is quite a stressful experience anyway, it would be nice if everyone could adhere to the same set of common principles of decency so that all passengers could have as comfortable a flight as possible. Clearly, this wish invites idioms involving flying pigs or a job lot of anti-freeze being bought in hell and is akin to my desire for world peace and an end to poverty.

One could speculate endlessly about the factors which provoke people to become awful human beings when in planes – claustrophobia, stress, reduced oxygen levels, dry air and so on – but I think it’s more simple than that: people in planes behave the way they do in every day life – the difference is, in an aircraft, their actions are condensed, concentrated and fuelled by free Bacardi. Just as leopards cannot change their spottiness, so humans cannot change their grottiness. My earlier wish for world peace is flawed by there being a small proportion of unpleasant people on the planet and it would be naïve of me to think that a large plane load of people is anything other than a microcosm of the world.

Stop them flying

I would be interested to see a list of troublesome passengers cross-referenced against criminal records. I don’t know, but I suspect a fair few would have existing convictions. My suggestion is this: anyone with a criminal record involving violent assault should not be allowed to fly for a minimum of five years. That might sound a bit Draconian but it would make life a whole lot easier for cabin crew and a whole lot more pleasant for the rest of us.

Failing that, perhaps air crews should be given a bit more power; in 2004 on a domestic Aeroflot flight over Siberia, a passenger complained about two crew members who he alleged were drunk. By way of demonstrating their sober dexterity and coordination, they proceeded to beat him up in what was the first ever case of reverse air rage.

I imagine flight attendants all over the world, raised a cheerful glass in the direction of Russia.

You may also like to read:

Airport Security – leave your rocks and palm trees here

Sitting Comfortably? – finding the right airline seat

Leg Room – how much will you get?