Anger in the Air

Joyce A. Hunter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754671930, 9780754671930
• eBook ISBN: 9781317181057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The new realities of airline travel came into full focus after the September 11 terrorist attacks. These horrific events escalated air rage incidents by 400%, but more importantly they put the entire airline industry under the spotlight. In subsequent years, the general public began to voice frustrations with the industry in very dramatic ways, a marked shift in consumer behavior from that of before 9/11. The International Transport Workers Federation responded with a call to action to bring about major changes to raise the airline industry to a level of service quality sufficient to meet the needs of 21st Century passengers. The quality of services that airline customers expect and the propensity toward air rage needs to be understood. Undoubtedly, some passengers are prone to air rage by factors in no way related to customer service. However, a better understanding of the customer's perception of service and airlines' offerings is one way of addressing the air rage crisis, combating the contributing factors long before they conspire to provoke a damaging incidence. Anger in the Air: Combating the Air Rage Phenomenon provides airlines with valuable input to help them better meet the service expectations of their customers and avoid instances of air rage on their flights. What do today's customers need and expect? What do airline customers perceive as the quality of services and how can the gap be closed between expectations and perceptions? The book addresses these key issues in five stages: 1.

Chapter 1
Anger in the Air

8/11

On August 11, 2000 (which I refer to as 8/11), on a routine flight from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, a muscular young man stood up out of his seat and a turning point was reached in passengers’ attitude towards flying.

At the gate earlier, 19-year-old Jonathan Burton, tall, blonde, and square jawed, with an open smile and a football player’s build, had just said a cheerful goodbye to his mother. An hour later, eyes dilated, he was pacing up and down the aisle, telling a flight attendant, “I’m fine. It’s just the drugs.” Suddenly he charged from the back to the front of the plane, screaming, “I can fly this plane!” before leaping up and kicking through the cockpit door.¹

Reports vary on what happened in the pandemonium that followed, but all agree that a few male passengers jumped up and blockaded the cockpit while a female flight attendant and several other male passengers eased Jonathan, who had recently watched a TV special on plane crashes,² towards a seat on the exit row. As they did so, he suddenly lunged for the emergency exit, screaming that he had to get out of the plane. Passengers again restrained and soothed him, asking questions to distract him from his fear. They seemed to have calmed Burton down, when a passenger said, he “went ballistic” on hearing that an off-duty policeman had come to help. Powered by panic and adrenaline, he seemed unstoppable as he kicked, bit, and punched as many as eight men, hitting the policeman hard enough to spray blood around the cabin.³

At that point it was as if an emotional switch had been thrown. The passengers, presumably bursting with their own adrenaline, began pounding and kicking Burton all over his body, pinning him to the floor long after he’d gone limp. Within hours, Burton died of strangulation.⁴ According to the autopsy report, when police walked on the plane they found him lying face down, “with at least one individual standing on his neck.”⁵

Known as a gentle soul who’d won an award for his work with the elderly, Burton had no history of mental illness.⁶ The autopsy showed just barely detectable trace amounts of cocaine and THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) in his system—probably not from recent use and not enough to account for his outburst.⁷ The death was ruled a non-criminal homicide, and no charges were filed.⁸

What turned Jonathan Burton from a harmless passenger into a threat to the safety of Flight 1763? And what turned his fellow passengers from supportive helpers into a death-dealing mob? This book will examine the potential answers to those questions and look at what can be done to minimize future such “air rage” episodes.

The media frenzy over the 8/11 incident first brought the phenomenon of air rage (so named because of its similarity to drivers’ irrational bursts of road rage) to widespread public attention both because it was shocking and grisly and because it was the first incident in which an American had died. But Jonathan Burton’s death was just the culmination of an explosion of air rage incidents in the years leading up to 8/11. Between 1994 and 1997, the number of air rage incidents reported around the world had more than quadrupled from 1,132 to 5,416⁹ —and as many as 30 times that number had been swept under the rug by image-conscious airlines. The International Air Transport Association that represents the airline industry worldwide said there were 10,000 incidents of air rage in the United States in the year 2000.¹⁰

It’s significant that during the same period, from 1995 to 2000, airlines were experiencing a considerable decline in service.¹¹,¹² Overbooked flights, persistent delays, and shabby aisle treatment at the hands of surly flight attendants contributed to declining service rankings for even top airlines, including American, Delta, USAir, and United.¹³ For passengers, the results were infuriating, and the question arose: Did this epidemic of poor service spawn the metastasizing rage?

It’s hard to remember now, but throughout their first 60 years of existence, the airlines were known for providing champagne service. Because theirs was the gold standard for customer care, other industries looked to them as models of how to keep customers happy. However, when the airline industry was deregulated in 1978, airline service and the quality of the flying experience began to deteriorate in the United States.¹⁴ And when bargain airlines arrived on the scene in 1992, offering fares as much as 70 percent lower than the rest of the industry, airlines across the board were forced to cut fares to compete. To keep profits up, they switched from selling relatively few high-priced tickets to a smaller group of pampered customers, to selling low-cost tickets in bulk. The result of lower prices, a lower profit margin, and more riders was a drastic cut in services.

For passengers, says Andrew Thomas, co-author of Air Rage: Crisis in the Skies, it was like going from shopping at an elite emporium like Harrods or Nordstrom, to standing in line at WalMart.¹⁵ As a result, since low-cost fares came in, airlines have been barraged with complaints about poor service, and the Airline Quality Rating, an annual analysis of Department of Transportation Statistics, says no airline is immune.¹⁶ Even Delta, Southwest, and Northwest Airlines, all previously known for some of the best service within the industry, have seen their customer service ratings fall sharply.

By 1995, providing good customer service had apparently ceased to be a driving force in the industry. Companies that used to live by the motto, “The customer is always right—even when he’s wrong” seem to have replaced that with, “The airline is always right—no matter what.” They strive to achieve maximum profits at any cost, with a blatant lack of accountability for customer satisfaction. This refusal to recognize the importance of customer service has created a dangerous and detrimental environment for the flying public. Airline personnel’s lack of courtesy, respect, civility, and sensitivity to customers’ needs has helped fuel the growing epidemic of air rage.

The consequences are more than unpleasant. Air rage is the single greatest threat to the flying public. On August 11, 2000, it was the raging passenger who was killed; but had Jonathan Burton gotten into the cockpit, the death toll could have included everyone on the plane. Air rage has already left airline attendants with stab wounds, bruises, internal bleeding, torn kneecaps, and a broken back and neck. But when a passenger gets totally out of control at 30,000 feet, it can take the airplane down, as passengers on All Nippon Airways learned on July 23, 1999. Shortly after their jumbo jet took off from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, a crazed passenger pulled a knife on a flight attendant and forced his way into the cockpit. He told the co-pilot to leave, stabbed the captain to death, and took over the controls. Luckily, the co-pilot and two airline employees were able to storm the cockpit, and a non-uniformed pilot was able to land the plane, but not before the plane had come within seconds (and 300 meters) of crashing into the ground.¹⁷

And that was before 9/11.

9/11

At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 flew into the World Trade Center and time stood still. Frozen in fear, Americans watched as planes flew into buildings, people jumped out of hundred-story windows, and screams could be heard for blocks. Then the Twin Towers crumbled into dark clouds of dust that swallowed chunks of downtown New York.

The 9/11 tragedy that altered every aspect of American life permanently changed the course of air travel. Now our images of flying include an airplane piercing a building against a sunny blue sky, blocks-long lines of passengers herded through security checkpoints, and the ever-present threat of more humiliating body searches, not to mention hijacking—all of which add to passengers’ anger and anxiety as they walk into an airport or onto a plane.

The 9/11 terrorists succeeded in “grafting a virulently toxic psychology into the very DNA of air travel,” said pilot and columnist Patrick Smith. “Not entirely surprising…in a society that increasingly encourages fear, front and center over rationality or common sense.”¹⁸

As a result, 9/11 has compounded the growing epidemic of passenger rage, while making it more urgent than ever that airlines around the world find ways to prevent it. Airlines used to brag of “something special in the air.” On September 11, that “something” turned into a toxic mix of fear and anger that would slowly seep into the hearts and minds of airline travelers and personnel alike, further eroding the civility of travel that was once an integral part of the industry’s culture.

For a short time after 9/11, the number of air rage incidents in America seemed to decrease because fewer passengers were flying, and those who did were on their good behavior. But the heightened tension these attacks added to the flying experience just increased the chances of air rage in years to come. Studies showed that airline passengers, filled with post-World Trade Center attack anxiety, were more likely than ever to lash out at fellow travelers and airline staff, warned psychiatrist Dr Graham Lucas.¹⁹

“Despite a drop in passenger numbers of as much as 30 percent in the past four months, air rage incidents [in England] have not reduced,” Dr Lucas, a British adviser to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), told a Royal Society of Medicine conference on the risks of international travel in January 2002. Although no published figures existed at that time, according to the United Kingdom Department of Transport, early indications from the CAA showed that air rage incidents after September 11, were at a similar level, despite fewer passengers.²⁰

By September 2007, air rage had again become such a problem that United Airlines created an internal committee to review air rage incidents.²¹ That month, author Andrew Thomas said, “Abnormal, aberrant or abusive behavior in the context of the air travel experience is back with a vengeance.”²²

9/11 Blowback: Vigilante Injustice

The 9/11 attacks made it especially urgent to deal with air rage. In the future, when pandemonium begins to break out in an airline cabin, personnel won’t be sure whether they’re dealing with an enraged passenger or a terrorist until after the incident is over, at which point it may be too late. In addition, pilots, locked in their cockpits since 9/11, won’t be there to help. Onlookers, panicked at the thought of terrorism, may overreact as they race to subdue a troublemaker—or, thinking it’s “just a blowhard,” fail to restrain a terrorist. That fact alone makes it doubly important in a post-9/11 world to recognize, understand, and contain air rage much more effectively than we have to date.

At the 2002 Royal Society of Medicine conference, Dr Lucas predicted that “twitchy” passengers could be expected to overre...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Dedication page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Anger in the Air
• 2 The Perfect Storm Airline Policies that Cause Air Rage
• 3 Personnel Policies that Cause Air Rage or Why Unhappy Workers = Angry Passengers
• 4 Passengers' Emotional Baggage Addicted, Crazy or Just Plain Rude?
• 5 Passenger Baggage Rage Addiction
• 6 The Genesis of Air Rage
• 7 Reducing Air Rage Smiling Customer Service
• Afterword
• References
• Index