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.
>>> Zelenskyy Fires Defense Minister Fedorov as Starmer Visits Kyiv
The real puzzle is why there’s not more air rage in the other direction; no, not Bristol to Krakow – crew to passengers.
