Passengers insulting cabin crew. What do you do? here is a case

[flapsforty]

Right there with you Jumbo.
In theory, offloading's the only way.

In practice, as CC you are aware of the commercial pressures. Offloading takes time, more so since the offender likely has luggage that will need to be off-loaded with him.
Delay for all the other pax who have paid good money to fly with your company and can reasonably expect an on time arrival at their destination. To be on time for that meeting/wedding/funeral/onward connection. Should they suffer because of one idiot?
Will the captain agree with you about the off-load? Will the company back you up or will YOU be blamed for the extra fuel, the time-table upset and the claims from pax?

In theory, aggressive behaviour is intolerable.
But are we talking instrumental aggression, random aggression, criminal aggression, mental disturbance or just someone who is stressed out by all the hassle at the airport and who will settle down once you're in the air?
You don't know, yet once you are taxying, or maybe about to take off at a very busy airport with an aggressive pap yelling at you like happened to me recently, you have to make that split-second decision........

So sometimes I ask the Captain to offload, sometimes I don't.
In my recent case we delayed the take-off run, the captain made a PAS urging the pap to comply with safety rules immediately and we took off 2 minutes later.
Result was a 12 hour flight from hell with an out of control, manipulative, abusive man who upset everybody around him and claimed enormous amounts of time and attention from both cockpit and CC plus endless writing of IFRs, ASRs and explanations to customer relations once this man filed a claim.

Departing with him on board was the wrong decision.
Hindsight 20/20 and all that.

******************

Yes we are trained to deal with abuse, different companies train their CC in different ways, and cultural differences also play a part. Staying calm and rational while attempting to soothe tempers does too. As does getting the pax to feel understood and 'seen', while at the same time making it clear that certain types of behaviour will not be tolerated and will end badly for the person himself. Different strategies to defuse the situation are available, but with some people nothing will ever do the trick. If we were able to exactly pin point those pax, life would be a lot sweeter.

To stay calm and polite in the face of abuse is horribly difficult, but age and experience help. Also helpful is trying to keep in mind that these people are "abusing your uniform" rather than you as a person.
Just the same, it makes me sad when it happens, and I always wonder what I should have done differently and better.
Nice to hear that there exist people like you who admire our self control

The whole thing is a swinging pendulum; next time, I will again be more forceful about an offload. Time after that I'll be inclined to hope for the best and let it go.
.... and again and again and again.....