Gail Scott enjoys her job as a flight attendant for America West Airlines and says she finds most passengers to be “very, very nice.” But she is no longer what you would call relaxed while working the aisles at 35,000 feet.
“If someone comes up behind me, I’m really jumpy,” says the 55-year-old Phoenix resident. No wonder: Scott has been physically assaulted twice by passengers in her 11 years on the job.
In the latest case–one that has deeply upset her–Scott said a 53-year-old female passenger, Thelma Hutton of Chicago, who had been drinking wine, flew into a rage after her request for another sandwich was rejected.
In the ensuing uproar, Scott said, Hutton pushed her down, grabbed her by the hair and tried to pull her backward over a seat. Hutton also slugged the captain in the face when he intervened. After the ruckus, Hutton passed out in her seat, awakening 20 minutes later and vomiting all over the row of seats where she was sitting.
In all, three of six crew members on the Nov. 10, 1995, flight from Chicago to Las Vegas were injured.
Hutton, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, was sentenced in January to two months’ confinement to her home, two years of probation and 200 hours of community service.
From Scott’s point of view, Hutton got off easy. “The way I look at it, she walked and I was left with a back injury that I need to live with for the rest of my life,” she said.
Abusive passengers “don’t realize the trauma they cause someone,” she said. “You’re trapped in a silver tube 35,000 feet in the air, and there is nowhere you can go to be safe.”
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With increasing regularity, it seems, airline flight attendants and pilots are being pushed, punched, bitten, grabbed, scratched, slapped and cussed at by unruly passengers–and with increasing aggressiveness, airlines are fighting back.
The airlines are turning to the government for help, training crew members to defuse situations, encouraging employees to pursue cases against offenders and–in the worst cases–barring them from flying again.
Alcohol is a factor in many fights. Although airline executives say they are being stricter in their beverage service, they could go further and stop offering beer, wine and liquor altogether.
But that, airline executives say, would generate a storm of protest from their customers, the overwhelming majority of whom are responsible drinkers. Moreover, some acknowledge, those drink carts provide a significant source of revenues.
The decline of civility in society in general also may be to blame. Cram enough people into a crowded aircraft and fights can become more common.
Last month, on a United Airlines flight from Memphis to Chicago, a 53-year-old Memphis brewery worker was handcuffed and tied to his seat with headset cords after he grabbed a flight attendant and a co-pilot by the face when they asked him to stop waving a flight emergency card in front of other passengers’ faces.
In January, a Northwest Airlines passenger, upset with having to wait for a gate agent at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, took out his frustration on a Northwest pilot standing nearby. Without warning, the man walked over to the pilot and shoved him up against a counter. Then the passenger slugged him so hard that the pilot had to seek medical attention.
Boorish behavior on the part of some passengers has existed since the dawn of commercial aviation. And only a relative handful of the hundreds of millions of people who fly annually cause trouble, said Jon Austin, spokesman for Minneapolis-based Northwest Airlines.
But in the last couple of years, the number and severity of such incidents appear to have increased dramatically, airline executives contend.
“What you have today is not just rude or ugly behavior, but outright physical abuse,” said Mary Frances Fagan, a spokeswoman for American Airlines. “I mean flight attendants, and sometimes pilots, are being struck, kicked, clawed, spat upon and knocked over.”
As a result, the airlines are paying more attention to the problem of unruly passengers. Most are training their flight attendants and other crew members how to defuse potentially disruptive or violent passenger behavior.
At American, for example, flight attendants are instructed to give written warnings to people who persist in harassing attendants, lighting up cigarettes on non-smoking flights or drinking alcoholic beverages they brought on board themselves. The letter states they could be arrested and prosecuted if they do not stop misbehaving immediately.
At United, flight-attendant candidates are schooled in how best to communicate with disruptive passengers so that a tense situation doesn’t become ugly. Because excessive drinking is often the catalyst for abusive passenger behavior, United trainees are taught to be careful in offering alcoholic beverages and to cut off drunk passengers tactfully.
Carriers also are standing behind employees, encouraging them to report incidents to the airline and to law-enforcement agencies.
United and American Airlines, the nation’s two largest carriers and the two largest tenants at O’Hare International Airport, are even providing their flight crew members with legal counsel and paid time off to pursue claims against air travelers who have caused them physical harm or mental anguish.
In extreme cases, airlines are blacklisting passengers, barring offenders from ever boarding their aircraft again.
When Joe Newman, the brewery worker from Memphis who allegedly grabbed the United flight attendant and co-pilot, tried to board a United flight at O’Hare to return to Memphis, he was told he had to fly on another carrier. United refunded him the money he paid for the ticket on the return flight.
Northwest was equally as tough on the man who decked the pilot in Detroit. Northwest said in a letter dated Jan. 20 that he was permanently barred from the airline’s flights.
In November, the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates airline travel, issued an advisory to the airlines, urging them to adopt “zero tolerance” toward passengers who step out of line during a flight.
The Justice Department also pledged to get tougher after Donald Carty, president of Ft. Worth-based American Airlines, sent a letter to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and met with her, asking for help in dealing with passenger misconduct.
Interfering with or refusing to cooperate with a member of an airline flight crew during a flight is a federal crime. Any passenger who hits or abuses a flight attendant or a pilot on an aircraft also can be prosecuted under state laws. Penalties range from probation to hefty fines and time in prison.
Gary Lee Lougee, a Georgia passenger aboard a USAir flight between Savannah, Ga., and Charlotte, N.C., had to be restrained late last year after he threw a flight attendant against the cockpit door and threatened to throw her off the plane. Her crime? She refused to serve him an alcoholic drink after she determined he had had too many before he boarded the plane.
Early this year, a federal judge sentenced Lougee to 51 months in prison and 200 hours of community service. In addition, he was ordered to pay USAir $611.35 for the extra fuel it used to divert his flight back to Savannah so he could be turned over to authorities.
Newman, the Memphis brewery laborer, was charged with two counts of battery. He is scheduled to appear in misdemeanor court in Chicago on April 23.
Because there is no central clearinghouse to keep track of reports of unruly behavior by airline passengers, it’s difficult to determine the precise number of incidents that occur each year.
FAA and FBI data suggest that the number of in-flight attacks upon crew members is actually decreasing. Last year, the FAA recorded 170, down from 174 in 1995 and 194 in 1994. FBI figures listed 135 cases in 1995, the last year for which figures are available, down from 282 cases in 1990.
The FAA and FBI officials point out that their numbers do not include incidents handled by local police or internal airline security personnel.
Data compiled by the airlines, however, indicate that incidents of unruliness are on the rise.
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United says that the number of such incidents almost doubled last year, to 404 from 226 in 1995.
At American Airlines, the number more than doubled since 1994, to 836 last year from 296.
Some of the increase might be because airline employees are more willing to report unruly passengers, now that their employers are encouraging them to do so.
That is only part of the explanation, say airline executives. The reasons why more passengers seem to be getting out of hand would fill a textbook on psychology.
Use of alcohol is the most commonly cited factor. At least one-third of the case reports referred to the FAA note that a passenger became out of line because he or she had too much to drink.
Airline executives also point out that incidents have increased simply because the number of people flying has increased. The number of United passengers, for example, grew to 81 million last year from 62 million in 1991.
Some industry analysts, however, blame the airlines for many of the problems. They note that it is the airlines and the airports that profit by selling booze.
Fierce competition among the airlines, they also say, has led carriers to cut meal service and the number of flight attendants and to add more seats at the expense of comfort. The elimination of amenities has made many people cranky and hostile toward air travel and at least some of them are taking it out on the airlines’ crews, the analysts say.