Pace:
There are certain people who have anger management problems and cannot take criticism. On the surface they appear friendly until something triggers that anger and then they see Red, the anger becomes uncontrollable and they have to vent that anger on something or somebody.
Blind rage! and i stress the word BLIND
I once flew a trip with a junior copilot with whom I'd never before flown, into one of the world's highest and most challenging airports, at the end of day one in a three-day sequence. Without out knowing anything about him, I might have flown the leg myself, but I knew his background was in military fighters, the cockpit atmosphere during the day had been totally normal - relaxed and friendly, it was daylight, and good weather, so he flew the leg.
On the arrival he was holding a good bit more airspeed than I was comfortable with fairly late in the profile, however, so I reached over for the lever and casually announced that I was going to go ahead and deploy the slats.
He immediately slammed the throttles shut, turned to me red-faced and asked in an angry tone, "Do you want to fly this f**** thing yourself?"
Many things went through my mind in a fraction of a second, but I resisted the urge to say, "Why yes, I believe I do." I knew if I did, I would build a brick wall between us and I'd be flying solo. Transferring duties at that point and flying without normal call-outs would have compromised safety, since I knew he'd let me crash rather than say anything in his mental state.
We continued with standard call-outs, etc. and he flew an otherwise flawless approach and landing.
Once we left the airplane nothing was said between us, even during the trip to the layover hotel. I changed and went to the restaurant to find him sitting alone at a table. I sat down, ordered, and said nothing.
After a few minutes of silence he said, "I guess I shouldn't have said that." I started laughing and we then had a discussion about the vast differences between flying single seat fighters and airline transports.
The remainder of the trip was normal and we parted friends. But I was concerned enough about his cockpit explosion to follow his subsequent trips for awhile and touch base with his captains to see if there were any repeats of his cockpit outburst. Aside from a few nits, no captain had witnessed anything similar, so I dropped it. But I'd never before witnessed anything like it in 30-years of flying.
So you really never really know.....