A 30-year-old drunk British holidaymaker tried to kiss a male flight attendant on a plane. He spent a week in Mallorca presumably thinking his actions were consequence-free.
He was then arrested on his way back through Palma airport.
In February, Jet2 banned two passengers from the airline for life after a mid-air brawl on a flight from Turkey to Manchester.
Last week, BA had to cancel a flight back from Barbados because some members of the crew were still too drunk from the hotel bar to operate it.
The Rise of Air Rage
The term “air rage” was coined in the 90s. The behaviour it describes went through the roof post-Covid.
In 2021, the number of reported incidents in the US was greater than in the previous three decades combined.
Incident numbers aren’t collected in the UK, only numbers of prosecutions. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) warns this is a poor metric because of jurisdictional gaps.
Something that’s illegal in the airline’s country – racist abuse, say – might not be illegal where the plane lands.
Often people arrested on touchdown are released without charge.
Unite, the union representing most cabin crew, which has 30,000 female members in the sector, last year found that 34% of women had been sexually assaulted at work (this includes ground staff).
67% had experienced unwanted flirting, gesturing or sexual remarks. 65% had been the recipient of sexually offensive jokes.
55% had been inappropriately touched.
40% had been shared or shown pornographic images by a manager, colleague or third party, such as a passenger.
Alcohol and Flight Dynamics
Drink is not the only factor, but it plays a significant role. There are a huge amount of people simply behaving as if they’re in a club.
Thomas has a colleague who was tracked down on Instagram by a guy who had seen her name badge.
Employees, female and male, report relentless harassment on their way to and from work, simply because they’re wearing the uniform.
That attention isn’t always sexual, she adds; it can be just staring or asking stupid questions.
Thomas notes that, putting actual sex aside, “passengers’ attitudes towards the cabin crew change a lot depending on your sex.”
That peculiar atmosphere – an inescapable, claustrophobic metal tube, in which half the people are behaving as though it’s 3am in a nightclub, a fifth are sober and doing a job, and the rest are either ignoring it or engaged in some other vexatious behaviour – can mean bad behaviour extends to colleagues, too.
She didn’t put in a complaint; cabin crew across the sector, from the most budget airlines to BA, report that when they’re sexually harassed or assaulted by colleagues, managers do nothing.
Things can get so tense between crew members that they’re assaulting each other while still in the air.
There was a period of stability around smoking, when everyone knew they couldn’t and didn’t push it – though Sergei had one passenger claim to have a certificate from his doctor saying he needed to smoke.
Then vaping arrived. Sergei decides whether or not to call the police based on whether people own up or not.
Otherwise, the main flashpoint is not sitting down when you’re told to, and the reason this gets so heated is largely economic: if you fall over during takeoff, landing or turbulence, the airline is liable for your not-at-all-unlikely injury.
And how often are you told you can’t go for a pee when you want to? Another guy got so furious he urinated on the cabin door.
Since we’re on the subject of economics, another factor at play is the relentless degradation of conditions.
The scenes cabin crew have seen – dirty nappies, excrement smeared on the toilet walls, crisps everywhere, all that dirty-protest urine, of course – make Thomas’s otherwise quite nihilistic conclusion probably the right one: “When you’re really exposed to every part of the population, you see that there are some really good people, but there are also completely filthy slobs.”
The job is more punishing than many may realise, physically and emotionally.
And the market intercedes once again, to make everything slightly worse (this is mainly on budget carriers): some pay commission on in-flight sales, so crew start to clash when the senior puts someone else on bottled water so they can sell the bloody marys themselves.
The rise in air rage, then, feels less surprising the closer you look: in any given flight, some people will be on their very last nerve.
The real puzzle is why there’s not more air rage in the other direction; no, not Bristol to Krakow – crew to passengers.
