Now I realise that I am a lot older than a lot of you out there but I think this is one of those rare occasions when the captain needs to appear in the cabin and to address the punters. (But only ever on the ground).
It has been my experience in the past that screaming women tend to shut up when you appear in front of them - they start to feel not a little foolish.
I would only ever recommend that this course of action should be used extremely spareingly but sometimes it is necessary to calm the fears of your customers.
A simple explanation of what the problem is and how well you understand the problem and that you have absolutely no intentions of dying before you pick up your paycheck will usually do the trick. "Do you really think I want to die Madam?"
Sometimes we have to leave the comfort zone of our office and display our authority. That is all part of being a captain.
Incidentally, I don't know if any of you out there ever heard the story of the little old lady who got very upset after push-back in a Laker DC-10 heading for New York?
Basically, the old dear became claustrophobic having never ever flown in her life before. The aircraft was pushed back on to stand. While this was happening, Fred Laker drove across the airfield in his Roller, dived into the aeroplane and sat down beside the old dear.
He established very quickly that she was on her way to the USA to see the previously unseen grandchildren but she was too terrified to go on this flight.
Believe it or not, Fred went with her holding her hand. On arrival in JFK, he went straight back to LGW on the same aeroplane after a couple of hours.
When he got back, the airport authorities had fined him quite a lot of money for leaving his Roller airside!
How many airline MDs would have done that?
Sometimes we have to realise that if we expect our authority as captains of aircraft to be respected then we have to be prepared to be seen and not just hide in our offices and issue edicts.
Now I strongly wish to point out that we should NEVER go back into the cabin in order to sort out disputes in flight. That's when it used to be useful to have a Flight Engineer armed with an axe!
So much for progress.