Air rage (again)
 

Picked this up from BBC website

Air passengers threatened cabin crew in mid-air after their flight home was diverted because it was running low on fuel, it has been reported.
About 15 travellers threw beer cans and tried to break into the cockpit, according to a spokeswoman for the Transjet airline.

The incident happened after passenger heard their Cyprus to Manchester flight was being diverted to Gatwick Airport on Wednesday evening.

The plane had used more fuel than usual due to strong winds, and the captain realised that flying to Manchester would have broken regulations by depleting reserves.

Sussex Police attended the plane upon landing, but no arrests were made.

People felt there had been poor service and things seemed to escape out of control

Sussex Police detective
The Transjet spokeswoman said an announcement that the plane would be making an unscheduled stop had sparked outrage.

About 50 passengers became unruly and some 15 threw cans, spat at stewards and tried to force their way into the cockpit, she said.

Police at Gatwick were alerted by the captain, and boarded the McDonnell Douglas MD83 plane when it landed at 2020BST.

One detective who boarded the plane said: "We feared there would be major problems when we heard the numbers involved, but things calmed down when we arrived.

"People felt there had been poor service and things seemed to escape out of control.

"All we could do in the end was give people who might have been involved a stern ticking off."

The passengers were later transported to Manchester by bus.

Thomas Johansson, who runs Transjet, said the plane could have reached Manchester, but doing so would have breached regulations by using up too much of the reserve supply.

"There were around 15 passengers who behaved very badly. They were spitting and throwing beer cans and they tried to break into the cockpit.

"The captain decided to divert to Gatwick and he called the police but couldn't identify them."

Address for story is http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1498000/1 498104.stm

[ 18 August 2001: Message edited by: jetstream7 ]

So why not add fuel and continue to EGCC, or was the aircraft based at KK?

Perhaps it was the thought of 4 hours + in a coach that caused the uproar! (not that I am in any way condoning the actions - hope they dragged a few away for a night at HM pleasure)

Diverting in to LGW and coaching pax the rest of the way......Hmmmmmm call me synical but that used to happen on Tristars a few years ago! :p ...As for the unruly pax. When will we as an industry ban these scum for life from every airline. With the threat of never being able to fly again people will think twice! :mad:


Edited in to english

[ 19 August 2001: Message edited by: Desk Driver ]

Makes you think huh..
With the "sudden" increase in airrage, are the pax the only ones to blame?..
I think that the airlines have to accept some of the blame. Also some case-reactions are overkill; take the 2 drunk sisters who had the airplane divert to alaska , due to them being a bit drunk and argueing like a typical husband and wife, Any FA with some people skills could have saved that one. Also it was also admitting defeat to 2 drunk 18 year olds!! I am not defending any acts of violence at all, but I hope that airlines would quit relieving themselves of responsability and the pax of rights.
Besides I should be happy as it generates more revenue for us, the bizjet charter ops..

<flameproof pants on>

I go with you on that one LRDRIVER.

I've also stood in line at check-in, been grunted at by some check-in clerk, had my baggage tossed onto the conveyer, queued even more, been man-handled and verbally abused by the security check, had to wait in a dingy, smoky room, had the flight inexplicably delayed nemerous times, not found anywhere on board to put my hand baggage, or had it taken away at the door, had my food or drink just tossed at me with no more than a typical grunt, been sat waiting for slot times in excess of an hour and not had the crew tell us what we were waiting for, been ordered about by bolshy cabin crew who's job it isn't to look after your food requirements and a thousand other things! As far as I'm concerned; let the media and the airline industry drop this brainwash, bullsh!t about Air Rage. If they want to stop it, first they have to clean up their own act!

Absolute Tosh 126.9. Try the service in Parkhurst if you don't like the airline service. There is NO excuse EVER for INBRED MORONS resorting to threats of violence. If these people tried to enter the flight deck then the police should pursue them with the vigour of an attempted murder investigation. (And then give the suspects a good kicking down at the station)

Here, here Bally Heck.....

A good friend of mine came up with a novel solution last year when a few pax of Nigerian persuation started a bit of a Brouhaha on the ground in Lagos....

He evacuated the cockpit and went back to the hotel....let security sort it out! :cool:

What the hell is ...?
Are you making up a language as you go along here?

My opinion on the matter is posted, and stands. Of course, if some idiot attempts to endanger the safety of the flight, it needs to be taken up sternly! That much is clear and unargueable!

However, almost all so called AIR RAGE stories one reads these days have nothing to do with that! They're about sensationalism and bored British public! They're usually posted in such great literary works of art as The Sun or The Mirror, or other such wonderful UK contributions to society.

I have personally witnessed passengers being verbally abused by airline staff; and when they came to react, labelled Air Ragers! Absolute Bullsh!t. If I were waklking in the street, and someone addressed me like that, I'd be libel to knock their block off. What makes it justifiable for them to do it as airline staff or crew? Sweet nothing I tell you, and they deserve to be punished. It's time that airline staff started treating their customers like customers, and not like cattle!

Put that in your pipe and puff on it pal!

Please don't get the idea that this is all got up by the Press. I have seen scores of such cases in Court and the behaviour concerned was not only dangerous, but must have terrified the other passengers. Trying to open the door is a common one (yes, I know you can't, but does Granny in 32E know that?) as are assaults on crew, damage to property and the rest. And this is all at a major airport with no charter traffic; so it is no good just blaming the shellsuits. The person in the dock is just as likely to be a suited businessman as anything else.

It's real. I don't know if it has increased, but I do know that airlines are much more ready to press charges than hitherto; in one case a foreign airline brought both pilots and two FAs 4000 miles to give evidence. The defendant promptly changed his plea to guilty.

Everyone has missed 1 vital point here. We are not just talking about verbal abuse. According to the Police Statement some passengers tried to break into the Flight Deck. We have all seen the consequences of this actually happening already with the BA incident not that long ago. If memory serves me correctly didn't that 747 lose something like 6000ft. This report doesn't say at which stage of flight the incident occurred but might not have had 6000ft to lose!!

This kind of thing will continue until strong and well-publicised action is taken against people who threaten and abuse flight crews. The Europeans seem to let these louts off easy. It's well know among US crews that deplaning disruptive/threatening pax in the UK or Europe usually results in no action. Criminal and civil action should be taken and they should be BLACK-LISTED from airline travel. They can walk to their next vacation, drunk all the way, if they want. IMHO.

[ 19 August 2001: Message edited by: Roadtrip ]

Just have done with it and shoot all passengers. Why not just carry freight - it doesn't argue.

Most of the stories do seem to appear in comics (aka nespapers).

Flown 'em all...for ignorant and disrespectful behaviour, you can't beat the Brits and the Irish..plebs in plenty, and litle in the way of tolerance or good manners. (I'm a Brit, but that doesn't excuse them...moving abroad as soon as I can)

"About 15 travellers threw beer cans "

Says it all really!

When are they going to ban alcohol consumption on all flights??

PFO

Scrap the juice, hand out spiffs, alcohol inflames the other mellows, thats why a blind eye was turned to it in the prison service. ;)

Then Draper would be able to have a ciggy.

Is it a fair question to ask why, of all the flights from the med to the UK at this time, this was the only one which did not have enough fuel due to high winds?

[ 19 August 2001: Message edited by: newswatcher ]

126.9 I think your wrong in this instance - The aircraft used extra fuel due to headwinds and had to divert to LGW to avoid burning fuel below legal minima.. However instead of coaching the pax: they should have had a quick refuel and continue onto MAN. If all the facts given to the passengers most of them would have understood and there would have been no problem. This airline is not based at LGW so there were no ulterior motives afoot.

Roadtrip - I don't think this is a purely European issue; I seem to recall plenty of Diverts to US airports where the miscreants have been offloaded and let off by the local judiciary. I don't recall any US courts taking a tougher line with these people.. I stand to be corrected if anyone else knows better.
:eek:

I remember the fuss on here when an international airline was caught arriving low on fuel reserves.
I don't condone the reaction but it makes you wonder about the flight plan fuel/diversion fuel/field etc.
Also where the plane/crew was based.Don't know anything(about anything?) or Transjet. :eek: :rolleyes:

I agree that there is absolutely no excuse for violence, no matter how poor the service. So what to do?

It's a no brainer, actually. This is what I do as a passenger time and time again. I quietly tell each person who screws me up that I am dissatisfied, I note their name and the precise time and location of the incident.

When I get home I write to the airline - using exacly the format of an accident report and providing detail at that level.

Then the airline writes back to me. If I am a member of their frequent flier programme they give me some gift FF points, or a discount on my next flight or, if it is really bad, both. If it is not Star Alliance they generally just give me a discount. Some airlines just send a grovelling letter of apology. I pin those up on the office wall and try to avoid that airline in future. Occasionally an airline writes to tell me that it was all my fault. I circulate those letters to all my friends and close business colleagues.

I am very careful to write only when the service is genuinely bad or causes actual inconvenience - and is not just the expected grumpiness of someone working under pressure.

This is so effective that I just regard bad service as being a discount voucher from the airline, and so am able to stay calm.

Cheaper flights or a stay in prison? Where's the choice?

(Statistical appendix. In the past 10 years there are 22 airlines on which I have travelled more than 20 rotations each. 17 of those have never generated one my letters, but 1 of them has generated 7. Does this message get pulled by Danny if I name it?
My home airport airline has put up with me 646 times in that period and I have complained twice.)

126.9
Any chap as don't know "tosh" is the same as "piffle" is prob'ly a bit of a bounder (prob'ly slouches too, doncha know).

Interesting item in today's Air & Business Travel News:

I don't know how the US crews see the European justice, but here in Europe, we know how fast and easy to launch is th US's one...
Here a story who take place a few years ago:
A french journalist, of the french newspaper "LE MONDE" (known as the french "reference newspaper") plan to have his holidays in the USA.
So he took a fly with his wife and son to (I think) Boston.
The man have, at this time, a broken leg, still wearing a plaster, and was walking with a crutch.
After boarding, he ask the FA if he could change his place to another where he could have his leg horizontally (cause of the plaster), and the FA desagree and let him in his first place.
End of the place story, and the fly took its way normaly to Boston.
Then, while coming out of the aircraft, he missed a stair, and fall in the arms of the same FA, who immediately screamed, and then, two FBI's guys rushed, took him, and put him in jail, where he stayed for a few days, whitout even a call to the french consul nor his wife, who was left alone with her children in the airport without news, and he was charged of AIR RAGE and "assault" on the FA...
Have nices holidays in USA...


I just don't want to imagine how this story was reported by the locals news medias...
:rolleyes:


MGloff

Have to agree with 126.9 here - a high proportion of air-rage incidents are public relations problemettes which get out of hand as a direct result of the immature behaviour of stewards/stewardesses who unfortunately have their heads filled with regulations and an inflated view of their own importance at the training stage and completely lack empathy and basic people skills.

And Rongotai, why should passengers have to put up with the "grumpiness" of people working under pressure? Grounds for complaint here alone, surely?

Well said PFO
Until we (airlines) stop encouraging cabin crew to sell as much booze as possible to boost their commissions we will always have these problems. Carriers can inform passengers about the effects of consuming alcohol at altitude and to drink plenty of water all they want but if booze is then made available in what would seem limitless quantities are we not shooting ourselves in the foot.

If we must serve beer’s etc, would it not be better to pour it into a plastic glass as part of the service, rather then give them something that can be used as a missile.

:mad: :mad: :mad:

WELL SAID 126.9

and may i add..

if the airlines didn´t have sullen, sulky ground staff and cabin crew, things would immediately improve 100%. many of the cabin crew think they´re god´s gift to men, women or queerdom and you are lucky if you get a grimace off them, instead of a grunt. (unless you are the lucky queer)

instead of being bad-tempered, impatient, arrogant and overbearing (see the dictionary under 'Lufthansa' here), a smile and a polite explanation/conversation wins over in 99% of cases

airlines - YOU are to blame for most 'air rage' cases.

the pax have a right to become angry when they are treated as they are being treated

i´m ashamed to get out of the cockpit and show my face some days

The blame is on society - people in the airline and people in the public. Society is sick, and will be until Shakespeare is made required reading again.

AfricanSkies, with badly thought-out and badly argued posts such as that, especially your homophobic jibes, you SHOULD be ashamed to get out and show your face. (I'll say nothing about the almost illiterate spelling, grammar etc.)

If you (and 126.9 and MaxContinuous) are attempting to argue that all Air Rage incidents are self-inflicted injuries, I think you will have to come up with some evidence to support your allegations, or retract them. Why? Because there is ample evidence to support the contention that, in the large majority of cases, there has been little or no shortcoming on the part of airline staff as far as their attitude is concerned. Because many incidents are the extensions of arguments between two passengers (e.g. over the passenger in front reclining his seat etc. etc.). Look at the statistics. They're there to e read, if you can be bothered.

All cabin crew with whom I have worked (with one exception, who didn't last long) are acutely aware that they are the front line in the airline's relationship with the passengers. If they don't perform as they should, they let EVERYBODY else down. And very few do.

Put yourself in their shoes for a while. They have to endure some of the most boorish passengers treating them (at best) like glorified waitresses, or as servants. They have to find a way tactfully (but firmly) to prevent breaches of safety and security. They have to enforce not only airline rules but the law as well. And sometimes, sure, the smile slips. You think you wouldn't have a sense of humour failure from time to time?

However, if they fail to give one passenger their widest smile and a "certainly, sir" when some drunken lout is insulting and rude, there is no excuse whatsoever for the sort of violence and extreme rage that has been the main feature of too many incidents recently.

If a passenger is dissatisfied with the standard of service, or someone in the employ of an airline has been rude, then they have the right to write and complain - not to wreck the joint, fight with crew and other passengers, kick their way into the flight deck, etc.

And if ANYONE, for any reason whatsoever, endangers either my safety, the safety of any of my crew, my aircraft or others of my passengers, I will demand that they be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Slightly off-topic, but still on the subject of getting pissed off at poor service while travelling by air.

I've found a lot of American so-called "international" airports to be absolutely abominable in the service they provide to international travellers. Yesterday, I was returning from LGW to PHL and disembarked at arounf 3:30pm to find an immigration hall not just packed with "alien" passengers, but overflowing down the corridor so that they had to let people up the escalator in groups of 20.

I had to wait in the queue for the immigration officer for an hour and half in a hot, sweaty, smelly and overcrowded snaking queue, struggling with my carry-on baggage among hordes of screaming kids. After an eight hour flight, it was a nightmare. The stress it engendered completely nullified any extra relaxation I got by paying the premium for a business class seat. By the time I got out of the airport I was fuming and ready to rip someone's head off. Not air rage, but airport rage - and I normally consider myself to be pretty level-headed.

This isn't the first time this has happened at PHL (although it was the worst). I've also had problems at IAD and JFK. Not only that, but PHL baggage handling is simply atrocious. Luggage is ALWAYS late onto the carousels, so you often have to hang around for an hour after you've disembarked (assuming you haven't already waited that hour out in the immigration queue). It's frequently lost and because he airport is so woefully unprepared for the amount of traffic it receives, they have teams of people taking the luggage off the carousels and stacking it in random piles around he customs hall almost as soon as it arrives so as to make room for the next flight.

Maybe I'm just being over-critical, but it seems to me that a lot of US airports make insufficient provision for the number of foreign passengers who arrive at peak times. It's not really a very good advertisement for your country when the first thing a foreign visitor has to do after a long and tiring flight, suffering from jetlag, is wait for ages in a hot stuffy queue.

I have to say you never see that at LHR or LGW - foreign passengers are usually admitted within five minutes or so of arriving in the immigration hall. In fact, at LGW, foreign business class passengers are issued with special "Fast Track" coupons to allow them speedy passage through immigration and customs.

I should add that US Airways(who I usually travel with) provide excellent service, and the customs and immigration officials at the airports I've always found to be pleasant and efficient. My gripe is with the airports and the airport authorities. Where are all our airport tax dollars going?

As a passenger on the above flight I feel it was a slightly over the top reaction from both pilot and crew regarding the offending passengers. There were definitly no beer cans being thrown and the one passenger that went to the cock pit was invited to do so by quite an aggresive crew member. Yes approx. 10 passengers were rude and quite annoying throughout the flight, but this did not constitute the remaining 150 passengers being removed from the plane under armed police surveilance. The crew were aware of disruptive passengers before take off, and in my opinion should prehaps have refused to take those passengers from Cyprus, however, they continued with the flighht offering these people drinks services galore! I cannot abide aggresive and rude people but I feel that crew members may have been able to calm the situation if they had not been so abrupt and defensive!

I flew into Cincinnati earlier this year and when the immigration chap asked me where I was going to I told him.

He said:

"What the hell do you wanna go there for, it's a !!!!!hole!"

Welcome to America!

PFO

Max Continuous asks why I tolerate what I called 'normal grumpiness'. I have a dilemma with this question. On one level I agree with him.

But if I see frustrated passengers queued up in 4 check in lines while another three stations are unmanned, then neither the passengers nor the staff on duty are responsible for the tension that is created - it is the airline beancounters who have undermanned the operation.

I am very unwilling to complain about an individual in such circumstances because I know that if I do it is not the management who are responsible for the situation that will take a hit, but the staff member on duty.

My standard is that I expect staff to do their jobs properly, I don't always expect them to be happy. Under pressure I can get grumpy as well. If a person providing me with a service is in a bad mood, I make some judgements based on available evidence about whether it is their own gratuitous behaviour, or a response to imposed working conditions. I then complain to the company, or not, according to that judgement.

Actually, when ORD is closed by a line of thunderstorms on a Friday afternoon, or when Ansett suddenly has its 767's grounded, the best thing to do is to empathise with staff regardless of their individual demeanour. Not only does that help to ease the situation rather than exacerbate it, but from time to time it results in some snarling monster miraculously finding me a seat on some other flight while everybody else remains stuck and engaged in mutual hostility.

Good for you, Rongotai. I always try to behave as you do. I don't always succeed! However, when I do, my experience echoes yours.

And if people think that dealing with grumpy, sullen or simply overstressed staff is reason enough to scream insults and oscenities, start fist fights, trash the place, endanger the safety of everyone around them, or simple beat and stab people half to death with broken vodka bottles perhaps they also ought to stay out of almost all fast food joints, all trains, many supermarkets, etc. etc. etc....

Hugmonster - I agree with you that there's very little excuse for sounding off and getting generally wound up just because you're face to face with a stressed out, grumpy employee, on the ground or in-flight.

Nevertheless it's probably fair to say that most cabin staff, when asked at their interviews why they wish to join an airline, will reply that a big reason is their desire to work with "people". God only knows why, because, let's face it, "people" are the most dreadful, depressing, awkward scumbags imaginable. Far better to work on your own or with machines, in my humble opinion. But given their apparent desire to work with the general public, surely we can expect them to be relatively mature in their outlook and properly trained in basic inter-personal and interaction skills.

Blatantly this is not the case at present. Far too many hosties are under twenty-five, immature and in fact just as awful as the general public they purport to serve and work with. They're basically out for themselves and not in the job in any way because they enjoy helping and pleasing others. Many of them are defensive and moody and take criticism personally. I've very little sympathy with them because they're the ones who say they wanted to work with "people" in the first place. What do they expect? Why do they even get out of bed for the meagre wages they are paid?

Of course it's the glorious exceptions which prove the rule. Potential air-rage incidents on my own flights have, to my certain knowledge, been defused by experienced, sympathetic, reassuring cabin staff who are in the job for the right reasons. These angels comprise, say, ten per cent of the total.

And there we have it - predominantly ill-mannered passengers and cabin staff all getting fed up with each other, a tinder box waiting to ignite...........

Although I agree that most cabin crew are very young and immature, I have never found myself wound up by anything in flight, other than being told to close my blind so they can screen a stupid movie about bears playing baseball (with the sex bits cut out) while cruising over Greenland in broad daylight.

However, I suffer ground rage almost every time I fly to or from a big airport. Twenty minute check-in queue, pre-assigned seat reservation not in the system, then the guantlet of security / emigration, two mile walk / run to the gate, overcrowded departure "lounge" (gonna love those A380s, oh baby), delay, tailback in the jetbridge, idiots who have been allowed to bring a steamer trunk as handluggage and now they're blocking an aisle and endangering anyone sitting under them while they stuff it into a creaking overhead locker... I can't remember ever plonking my weary arse into an airline seat not drenched in seat. I love flying so for someone who doesn't, or maybe hate it, I don't know how they don't lose the plot.

Arriving can be worse - and I don't find LHR or LGW Arrivals that thrilling by the way, I am a non-EU national who is resident in the UK and that 'others' queue at T3 has NEVER been "five or ten minutes" (as someone suggested above), more like 30+, which admittedly still isn't as bad as in the US. Difference is that you're off the aircraft so you're more likely to kill a taxi driver than a trolley dolly / dragon with a wagon.

Agree with Mr Draper, ganga should be compulsory for SLF. No-one ever kicked in a shopwindow after smoking weed. The quickest and most stress-free inflight experience I ever had was Athens-BKK-Sydney on an Olympic 747 in my younger years. Swallowed a hefty lump of hash while on the taxiway at Hellenikon and dozed and snacked in contented silence all the way home. God bless those OA caterers for their generous portions. Although the view as we pounded out over the Greek Islands with the Med sparkling in the morning sunshine didn't really need any mood enhancement. (BTW I've flown OA longhaul without the Class Bs and still found them really good, including the food.)

I have to disagree with Max. I have found that most "people" on this planet are decent folks - ground agents and flight attendants included. I try to treat everyone nicely and it is a rare occasion when I run into anyone nasty. I think good folks are in the majority but very quiet about it. It is the horrible encounters that one remembers most,unfortunately, and this does tend to colour attitudes. As for the trials and tribulations of crowded airports,flights, delays etc. I try to step back mentally and observe - makes it less personal and "Turned out nice again, didn't it?"
As for LHR T3 - absolutely horrible terminal. As a non-EU resident flying into it six times a year over many years - I have never, ever had to queue longer than five minutes at customs and immigration. Never had a lost bag either. Damn charmed life...so far.

I have to say that whenever I fly (which is at least 3 times a month) I always empathise with the ground staff no matter how awful things are.

You can only admire people who VOLUNTARILY choose to work with the public.

A more disgusting, annoying and rude conglomerate of idiosyncracies you could never hope to find. The public that is. They're the reason I quit my retail career and am now a consultant. If a member of the public irritates me at work at least I know I can charge the B*****D $200.00 per hour for the privilege.

When you think about it the pilots have the best position in the airline. They only ever have one way communication with a bunch of people they never have to look at. Even when they're under attack the FA's are a formidable line of defense.

But to get back to the topic, I would have to agree that the majority of air rage incidents just would not happen if alcohol was not supplied. After all is it really necessary????? Can't we just go for a few hours without it?

Hmmmmm, I wonder how many incidences of air rage Saudi Arabian Airlines have, as a 'dry' airline?

Any KSA based PPRuNers care to comment??

Hugmonster

firstly, i don´t spend my life and times on pprune writing prose to suit you, this isn´t an english competition, you stuffed shirt :rolleyes: ...as for homophobic, i certainly am. all the more for you, eh?

it is not my argument that all air rage cases are the fault of the airline. if you read my post more carefully, you will see that i said they were to blame for 'most' air rage cases. of course the airlines cannot be held responsible for the insane. however, the cases you read about in the media are the tip of the iceberg! for every one incident where a passenger explodes into violence, there are perhaps fifty passengers who are seething in their seats! just because there is no outburst certainly does not mean there is no rage! this as a result of having been shunted from pillar to post from the moment they arrived at the airport. ...parking problems... heavy bags... standing in long queues...miserable faces of stressed ground staff...booking problems...security checks...finding the way to the gate...more sullen ground staff, usually more stressed out by this stage...waiting at the gate... delays....... by this time most passengers are edgy, if not outright tense...so when the flight is called they all jump up at once to get through the gate..more stress...the passengers arrive on board only to have to fight for overhead locker room, if not seats themselves...to their dismay the pitch has yet again been reduced...to the extent that if they drop their headset onto the floor they are unable to simply reach down and pick it up....not that it would matter, ten to one it was faulty anyway, and from where they have been seated (which was not their originally booked seat) they can´t see the screen without twisting their necks...the baby in the seat behind them is squealing, it´s parents are having a whispered argument...the frosty flight attendant comes past with the trolley taking out any elbows which happen to be an inch over the armrest..and throws everyone a roll with a grunt...later the pax is thirsty, he presses the call button...surprise, surprise, nobody shines up...he manages to catch the eye of a flight attendant and asks for a drink...after she´s been past three or four times she remembers his request with a tut and brings him a miniscule plastic beaker filled with diluted orange juice which he finishes in one mouthful...i could go on and on...and i do, i know

years ago, before ‘cost-cutting’ was the buzzword on airline employee´s lips, airlines did not have bare-minimum facilities at airports. they operated aircraft where passengers could sit in relative comfort, instead of packing them in ever tighter whilst fighting off the dvt lawsuits. they treated passengers as customers. today they are just another pax, just another problem. no wonder that sometimes the problems assert themselves....

and don´t take umbrage at the grammar huggy, you got the only capital letter in the whole post...

:D

Interesting to read the account of the incident from Katie who was actually on the flight - and gives a very different description of events from the picture painted by the Press.
Perhaps the reason the police didn't arrest anyone for allegedly trying to force their way onto the F/D is that no-one did!!

Curious (and amusing) that whenever the Press reports an aviation story which is critical of the airlines we protest that it is a melodramatic and exaggerated distortion of what actually occurred - yet many ppruners seem all too ready to believe such stories when the criticism is of pax!

When these stories occur, there is a reluctance to accept even the possibility that the attitude of our check-in staff and/or CC could have been even a contributing factor.
And, when someone in the industry speaks out and tells the truth as he/she sees it, he/she is attacked.
The majority do their jobs well; but, sadly, there is a minority who seem to be ill-suited to a service industry, and give the impression they'd enjoy their work more if it wasn't for the pax - who pay their wages. The public can be tiresome; if that's a strain, find a job which doesn't involve serving them.

Hugmonster: I haven't the time (or inclination) to check my grammar. Have fun! :rolleyes:

[ 22 August 2001: Message edited by: Heliport ]

Max-Cont'-I agree with Rolling Thunder-most people are not scumbags. Most are decent, pateint people. The scumbags that do cause trouble should be delt with very severely. The airports are definetley a cause of stress, but anyone getting seriously arsey at that stage should be denied boarding, esoeciacally if they're drunk. Its far easier to deal with trouble on the ground, with space and police available, than in an confined space of an aircraft. It must be very frightening for passangers to have someone causing trouble in the air. Trying to open the door is an excellent example. We all know that the pressure amounts to several tons, preventing anyone opening it i flight, but passangers don't-it must be terrifying.
It doesn't matter how frustrated you are or how shoddy the service, there is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for violent or threatening behaviour. I've worked with people with learning difficulties and behaviour problems and some of the things on hears about with air rage sounds like the perpetrators are candiates to be sectioned!
Can you blame the CC for over reating slightly-they've probably all seen incidents before, and don't want some t*** to stick a broken bottle in their face. Their job is to look after these c***s in an emergency, not take this!
Stop alcohol on flights, and be really tough on the idiots, before a fatality in flight on a complete a/c loss occurs.

[ 22 August 2001: Message edited by: Captain James Bigglesworth ]