A flight attendant has syrup thrown on her when the pancakes arrive cold. Another is shoved into a serving cart because she didn’t serve a glass of wine fast enough.
Both incidents involve passengers traveling in first class. But little is first class about the behavior aboard airplanes.
If you think people are rude on the road, pity the flight attendants who get dissed by booze-guzzling boors in a stuffy airliner cabin at 30,000 feet.
They’re supposed to pacify grumpy passengers who stuff their wardrobes into bulging overhead bins and whine when their coats get wrinkled. They’re expected to smile when flippant fliers poke at them, tug on their apron or holler “Hey, you” to get their attention.
The flight attendants’ union says on-the-job complaints by its members are on the rise. They range from physical assaults–being grabbed, punched, pushed or scratched–to bad manners.
“We used to get respect. Now . . . the passengers act like they’re riding a bus,” says Sharon Housley, a flight attendant who, in her eight years on the job, has seen her co-workers doused with syrup, shouted at and shoved.
On a recent trip from Minneapolis to Newark, a man in first class became irate when he wasn’t served a glass of wine right away. He screamed at the flight attendants and pushed one into a serving cart, making her cry.
“There’s no reason for stuff like that,” says Housley at a recent stop at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. She flies for Northwest Airlines.
The incidents are not confined to any one airline or route, though many flight attendants say trips along the Northeast corridor rank among the worst.
“While we’ve been aware of these types of incidents in the past, we’ve seen a marked increase in the past year,” says Mary Kay Hanke, international vice president of the Association of Flight Attendants in New York, which has not totaled the number of complaints.
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Why this impertinence in the skies? Some blame fierce competition between the airlines, which are cutting service to reduce fares and costs. Yet, passengers cruising in those cheap seats clamor for high-cost frills.
“They want international service, even if it’s a low-fare flight,” says a Carnival Airlines flight attendant who flies between South Florida and New York.
“This is a service-oriented business,” says Hanke. “Customers like the no-frills prices, but they don’t like the cut-back service.
“As the carriers cut costs, we will see more passengers who are dissatisfied. The flight attendant is on the front line. We are quite often the recipient of their displeasure.”
Many airlines have eliminated meals on shorter flights and assign the minimum number of flight attendants required by federal law: one per 50 seats.
“Where in the past you might have four flight attendants serving dinner, now you have three,” Hanke says. “It takes longer. As the airlines cut back on service, they haven’t educated the passengers on what to expect.”
Many passengers expect more.
The International Airline Passengers Association, a Dallas-based consumer group, reports a rise in the hundreds of complaints it gets each year from air travelers, says spokesman Geoff Collins.
“Certainly their level of frustration is higher than it’s been in the past,” he says. “A lot of people are disconcerted that there are a zillion different fares on any given flight. They’re not getting the quality of food. They don’t have the same amount of room they used to have. There’s an overall level of dissatisfaction that’s increasing.”
Collins says travelers should be realistic about the level of service an airline can provide on a low-fare flight and make a profit.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” he says. “I would much rather have them give me a half can of Coke and peanuts instead of a sandwich than cut back a scheduled maintenance because it’s not in the budget.”
And as airlines cut back, passengers seem to be leaving their manners, and their better attire, at home.
“There’s just not the same level of civility,” says a Delta Air Lines flight attendant based in Atlanta, who has flown for more than 20 years. “Everyone used to dress up when they flew. Now they’re in blue jeans, cutoffs and tank tops.”
Karen Ford, who flies for Southwest Airlines, says some passengers get angry at flight attendants who enforce safety rules, such as requiring them to check excess baggage and bring only two carry-on bags aboard the plane.
“Some people start screaming and swearing at you,” she says.
One woman on a Houston-bound flight became abusive when flight attendants told her to check a lamp she wanted to put on the seat next to her. The flight was full. She then demanded the attendants find a box. (The lamp was checked and arrived broken.)
Robert Morgan, also a flight attendant for Southwest, got elbowed in the back after he asked a woman about to sit in an exit row if she was fluent in English. (Federal law requires passengers in exit rows be fluent in English to assist in an emergency evacuation.)
“When I saw that she was out of control, I just turned my back,” Morgan says. “So while she was stowing her bags, she started elbowing me in the back. I mean, she was really elbowing me.”
Airline security took the woman off the St. Louis-to-Detroit flight.
Interfering with a flight crew is a federal crime and hitting a flight attendant or pilot can land you in jail. Last year, the FBI investigated 135 such cases on U.S. carriers, though many less threatening incidents are not reported or prosecuted.
“It does happen more frequently than people realize,” says Paul Miller, spokesman for the FBI office in Miami. “Mainly, it’s obnoxious, belligerent or intoxicated individuals who seem to be the real problems. But we have had some serious incidents.”
Consider these recent ones:
– On a January American Airlines flight from Quito, Ecuador, to Miami, a 37-year-old Miami man demands a drink before the jet hits the runway, later trips an elderly woman, then hurls racial slurs and pushes a flight attendant. He’s arrested in Miami.
– That same week, federal agents are called after flight attendants have to restrain a man wanting to fly naked on a San Francisco-Miami-Bogota flight. A 43-year-old man urinates on the seats and punches another passenger and a flight attendant on a United Airlines flight in June from Japan to Honolulu. He is jailed in Honolulu for interference with a flight crew.
– An investment banker defecates on a food cart and then uses linen napkins as toilet paper in a drunken rage on a United flight from Buenos Aires to New York.
(The 52-year-old banker, who lives in Greenwich, Conn., pleaded guilty in May to threatening a flight attendant and agreed to pay $49,029 to cover the airline’s cleanup costs and reimburse fellow passengers. He told the judge he was angry because he had been refused more wine.)
– A 43-year-old Saudi princess scratches the arm of a flight attendant on a TWA jet from Paris to Boston. In June, she was fined $500 and placed on probation.
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Flight attendants are trained to defuse situations before they escalate, says Audrey Levine, director of in-flight services for Carnival Airlines.
“They’re trained to work together and keep each other informed of what’s going on,” she says. “They learn to back off and let someone else deal with a situation.”
If there is a growing lawlessness among passengers, it’s less due to lack of service and more a sign of the times, Levine says.
“Look around you. Watch TV. Listen to the news. What’s happening these days encompasses all areas, whether you’re on the ground or in the air.”