You’re probably already somewhat familiar with road rage and its risks. Every day, drivers lose their tempers for various situations, and they might end up lashing out at other drivers or even contributing to an accident.
As if the potential for a road rage incident isn’t anxiety-inducing enough, there’s another growing pattern affecting travelers—flight rage.
We’ve seen in the past year an enormous increase in situations in airports and on planes where people are growing disruptive, aggressive, and even violent. We explore what’s behind these situations and how the pandemic is changing travel in some pretty negative ways.
If you’ve seen any of the viral videos in airports and on planes from around the country recently, you’ve likely been shocked and horrified.
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA recently said that in a period of fewer than five months, their workers had seen aggression and violence at rates of 20 times more than a typical year.
The union released a statement saying they believed a lot of the problem could be due to people’s combative attitudes about earing masks on flights. That statement was in response to one particular episode, where Southwest Airlines banned a woman who punched a flight attendant in the face, knocking out two of her teeth.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, as of July, they had received thousands of reports of aggressive and unruly passengers. The FAA has since said it would pursue various civil penalties for anyone interfering with an airline crew. They have a zero-tolerance position.
Of those reports to the FAA, the vast majority were related to the federal mask mandate.
Along with attacking crew members, people are fighting one another physically and verbally, indicating that not all the problems are mask-related.
For example, one flight attendant says he got a concussion when he was trying to break up a fight between three passengers. On a JetBlue flight, an attendant was body-slammed by a traveler after he didn’t let her take items for first-class passengers.
In response to some of these events, Southwest Airlines and American recently said they wouldn’t be serving alcohol onboard flights. They said that they believe alcohol contributes to some of the harmful behaviors, and it can heighten the tension when it’s already high.
Some psychologists believe the incidents might be related not just to frustration over masks but also the stress and anger that the pandemic has generally created. People have been isolated, faced financial pressure, and are mentally often not faring well.
Rage is often a result of trauma, and the pandemic has created a sense of trauma for many people.
Anger can also stem from feeling out of control, so we’re facing a sense that we’re not only out of control in our daily lives right now, but when you’re flying, those feelings can go up.
One study showed that as the COVID-19 situation continued, more and more people in America started describing themselves as frustrated and angry.
Along with pandemic-particular effects, there are now fewer frequent travelers onboard flights. In the past, a lot of flights were made up of more business travelers than leisure travelers. Now, business travel remains pretty shut down. The people on flights may be less well-versed in travel in general and what good air behavior looks like.
Plus, the rules seem to change constantly everywhere that we go, also contributing to the tension. For example, the guidance was that fully vaccinated people didn’t need to mask anymore, except on planes. For the vaccinated, that felt unfair.
Now, we seem to be returning to masks on a large-scale basis, also causing frustration.
Even before getting to the airport, many travelers have to go through testing procedures, long lines and many airports and airlines are understaffed because they didn’t seem to account for a potentially rapid pickup in travel.
While the pandemic has dramatically increased the number of reported incidents, it’s not a new phenomenon altogether.
In fact, flight attendants are trained to look for abnormal behavior when people are boarding. For example, red flags to a flight attendant might include passengers who seem to be under the influence of drugs and alcohol, passengers with red eyes or someone who appears disoriented. Even at the boarding gate, crews are likely assessing passengers.
If something out of the ordinary is noticed at the boarding gate, the crew can prevent them from boarding. If it doesn’t seem like a huge problem, they might let the cabin crew know to keep an eye on the person.
If you find yourself in one of these increasingly common situations, what should you do?
First, you need to be careful before intervening in any way.
If you think you notice someone is intoxicated or disruptive, let the crew know quietly but as soon as you can. Then, at least the crew can become aware that they should stop serving that person. If they stop serving them alcohol and continue to cause a disturbance, the crew might isolate them. They’ll usually move them to an empty row at the rear of the plane.
Flight attendants are usually trained only to restrain someone if they get physically violent.
If someone is very close to you and behaving aggressively, remain as calm as you can. Keep your tone and body language neutral.
The last thing you want to do is make a situation worse.
The calmer you can stay in general when it comes to air travel, the better. Be prepared for some frustration and the need to wear masks continuously on your flight. If you aren’t ready for that, you might want to wait a little longer before you hit the skies.
