Air rage: why people become aggressive in airplanes and how to protect themselves - ForumDaily
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Air rage: why people become aggressive in airplanes and how to protect themselves

Many have observed this situation: unexpectedly, one of the passengers aboard the plane goes berserk for a minor reason, from the small distance between the seats to the unsuitable temperature of coffee served by a flight attendant. The attack may be accompanied by aggression towards people and objects around. This condition is well known to workers in the airline industry and is called air rage.

Photo: Shutterstock

Air rage, writes The Express Tribune, is a tendency towards increased aggressiveness on airplanes. As a rule, others do not expect from people (and some do not expect from themselves) such a hyper-reaction to minor inconveniences: it seems that flying does affect a person’s temperament. Flight attendants complain that incidents of air rage are on the rise and that little is being done to prevent such situations or to inform passengers about the condition before flights.

About 4000 incidents happened last year, but only a few aggressive passengers were fined, reports ABC News. According to the Air Transport Workers International Union, only half of airlines have policies in place to prevent air rage incidents. Only a third of companies provide training to their employees on how to deal with aggressive passengers. Other airlines rely on passenger assistance.

Huffington Post explains: the majority of air rage attacks are caused by the passenger’s concern that he cannot control the situation and influence anything while in a flying airplane.

“Anger occurs when you feel a lack of control,” says Dr. Martin Seif, a psychologist who specializes in fear of flying. “In reality, we are never completely in control, but in flight this feeling intensifies.”

If you find yourself on a plane next to a terrible seatmate or a child who bangs his feet on the seat, perhaps more than ever, you realize how powerless you are. Not everyone reacts with attacks of aggression - but it happens. Especially if the passenger decided to cheer himself up with alcohol, intensifying his already violent emotions.

In addition to problems with control in the sky, air rage may have other reasons:

  • Experts believe that the main cause of “brutality” is the use of alcohol and drugs. At high altitudes, oxygen access to the brain decreases; the same effect is observed when consuming alcohol and drugs. Therefore, one serving of alcohol in flight is equivalent in effect to two such servings on the ground. The same applies to the effect of any psychotropic drugs.
  • The second most important cause of air rage is restrictions on smoking on airplanes. Lack of nicotine causes frustration in heavy smokers. An attempt to smoke at the wrong time in the wrong place starts 70% of all recorded air rage incidents. A complete ban on smoking on planes leads to passengers locking themselves in toilets and trying to disable the fire alarm. Some people throw cigarette butts directly into the toilet, forgetting that on airplanes it is filled not with water, but with a toxic chemical mixture.
  • Experts from Cranfield University consider the lack of fresh air to be another major cause of passenger rabies. To save fuel, practically in all passenger airplanes the ventilation system is designed in such a way that the same air is fed to the cabin, which is only filtered, but not saturated with oxygen. As a result, the level of carbon dioxide in it reaches 60%.

According to a psychologist from Boston University, Tom Cottle, the plane is one of the few places where a free person is continuously told what to do and what not to do: check in your luggage, fasten your seat belts, do not get up, do not smoke. This infuriates not only the economy class passengers nestling in the tail of the aircraft. First-class passengers will not tolerate any comments or instructions made by a flight attendant. They paid a lot of money for the ticket and believe that anything can be demanded for it. In addition, they are accustomed to give orders themselves, and not to obey the orders of some stewardess.

Why is it dangerous

Air rage is more than just an annoyance that creates discomfort for passengers and crew. In a confined space in the sky, an attack of uncontrollable rage can lead to injury to others, damage to the aircraft and even a plane crash. In addition, a person who is raging on an airliner cannot be asked to leave or simply thrown out - for this it is necessary to land.

On the subject: 10 offensive reasons for dropping people off planes

Most often, in a fit of air rage, people attack those nearby, some try to destroy everything they can reach, attempt to break into the cockpit and attack them. These actions do not necessarily indicate the terrorist plans of the attacker - usually this is an attack of senseless aggression.

Portrait of a “furious” airline passenger

The British Air Transport Association tried to paint a portrait of the typical airline offender: 78% of them are men, 66% of offenders are between the ages of 20 and 30; 95% are economy class passengers; 43% act out while intoxicated; 33% expressed a desire to smoke; 11% were physically violent. It turns out that the typical “flight crazy” is a tipsy guy from economy class who desperately wants to smoke.

From what it all began

The "air rage" phenomenon first came to public attention after a high-profile incident in December 1997, says Merchant. A passenger on a US Airways flight from Baltimore to Los Angeles, Dean Trammell, began walking up and down the aisle and tugging at passengers' shoulders, saying, “Touch me and you'll live forever. We'll go to heaven together."

Stewardess René Schaeffer, a former nurse, immediately diagnosed acute psychosis. She did not argue with him or threaten, but simply escorted Trammela, who claimed that he was Jesus Christ, in the back kitchen compartment, away from the rest of the passengers who began to loudly complain about the behavior of a madman. She spoke softly to him and seemed to be able to calm him down. He closed his eyes, knelt, and began to pray quietly.

Suddenly he jumped up and declared: “I must bless the pilots. I have to give them a message." Despite Schaeffer's entreaties, the newly minted Jesus rushed to the cockpit. The front cabin flight attendant managed to block the door, but the passenger knocked her down, she hit her and lost consciousness. At this time, Schaeffer caught up with him, whom he easily lifted up and threw forcefully into the front seats. (As a result, she suffered multiple fractures, a back injury, and damage to her kidneys and stomach. She underwent three surgeries and did not return to work until two years later.)

Two free pilots, with the help of passengers, knocked Trammell to the floor and tied him up. However, despite the fact that the entire salon was covered in blood and two employees were seriously injured, the court sentenced Trammell to only a $1,5 fine and 150 hours of community service, since he was declared mentally ill. At the same time, the court did not take into account that before the flight, “Jesus” took a hefty dose of LSD.

Other, no less striking examples of “air rage”:

  • Boeing 747, flying from Brazil to London, made an emergency landing on Tenerife, as one of the passengers went wild and tried to open the door directly over the Atlantic Ocean. On the ground, he was handcuffed and tied to an armchair, after which the plane arrived in London with a four-hour delay.
  • A British airlines plane had to be grounded after one passenger, after drinking a bottle of bourbon and taking a dose of methadone (a synthetic substitute for heroin), beat up a flight attendant and smashed the head of the co-pilot. The reason for her rage was that she was denied an extra drink.
  • The KLM aircraft flying to South Korea was forced to land in Krasnoyarsk because the passenger seriously injured a flight attendant who blocked his way into the cockpit.
  • 29-year-old David McCallam, who flew on a weekend in Tenerife, quarreled with his sister sitting next, and then began to threaten that he would open the door of the plane. The pilot decided to lock the door and made an emergency landing in Lisbon. The court sentenced McCallum to one year in prison.
  • On an Aeroflot plane flying from Delhi to Moscow, one of the passengers beat up a flight attendant and began running up and down the aisles, shouting something inarticulate. The guards, with the help of passengers, tied him up, and at Sheremetyevo-2 they checked his visa, which turned out to be fake, and sent him back to India.
  • The passenger of the plane, which just departed from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, threatened the flight attendant with a knife, reached the cockpit, cut the captain’s throat and seized the helm, causing the plane to fall. The co-pilot with assistants broke into the cockpit, defused the invader and safely landed the plane. But the captain during this time bled out. The passenger explained to his investigators his behavior by the fact that he had trained a lot on a computer-assisted simulator and wanted to try to fly for real.
  • 19-year-old Jonathan Burton was killed by passengers trying to pacify him. In an airplane flying from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, Burton threatened passengers and tried to break into the cockpit. Several men blocked his way and beat him until he fell silent. But after landing, it turned out that Burton is dead. Someone from the voluntary defenders of the order did not calculate the impact force.
What to do if you are faced with a bout of air rage

Scotdir.com offers to try to keep calm during the flight. Imagine that you treat others like your grandmother, who leads you to church. Be attentive, courteous, respectful, sober and unbiased to the views of others.

If this does not work, use the same methods of managing anger as in any other situation: neutral body language, innocuous words, avoid confrontational postures, gestures or words, do not speak down, deliberately slow breathing and speed of conversation. Do not respond quickly or without hesitation.

Be willing to compromise if the opinions of someone around you contradict your own. Just agree with him for the duration of the trip - it's better than changing places and wasting the rest of the trip, afraid of running into this person again. But remember, you paid for the same trip and class of travel as everyone else, you deserve the same level of respect and equal service from flight attendants, so don't compromise your own rights too much.

As with any disagreement, sometimes a third party is needed to intervene and solve a problem, so don’t be afraid to ask the crew for help. Be prepared to make a team decision with respect, even if you don’t like it too much.

And one more piece of advice: if you feel like it’s you that’s “covering” you, try to distract yourself from the thought of where you are and what’s happening around you - turn on a movie or music, focus on reading books, or alternately tense and relax different muscle groups, concentrating on each of them.

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