Manrow:
The passengers react in whatever manner they consider appropriate because they consider they know better than the crew?
Can someone please list the occasions when passengers knew better how to deal with the problem than the crew paid to do so?
Your thinking is slightly flawed. Unless the crew show
LEADERSHIP then the customers are perfectly entitled to assume they are the same sort of bored, know nothing, jobsworths encountered in security screening.
As for the customers knowing better then the Cabin crew, I suggest that applies most times there is a medical emergency and a doctor happens to be on board.
In my experience as a passenger, there is a vast difference in perceived authority levels between various airline cabin crews.
To put it another way, it doesn't matter what the cabin crew think they know, unless they can exemplify it to the passengers.
In an airborne emergency I'd much rather be flying with a crew of QF hard bitten "Old Boilers" than the much more delicate and decorative crew from other airlines, because I know the QF old boilers know their stuff, and exhibit a natural authority that is apparent in the way they handle passengers and events.
To put it another way, I blame the cabin crew, not the passengers.