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Attendants Strike Back
The Travel Critic · April 20, 1998

If you're brave enough to complain about bland food, bad seats or below-standard service on a flight, beware: You may get an earful back.

Overworked and often underpaid, more flight attendants are striking back at troublesome passengers. While physical assaults are very uncommon, verbal attacks-what the Federal Aviation Administration terms "Category Two" misconduct-seem to be happening with greater frequency.

One American Airlines flight attendant recently told me the story of a colleague who lost her cool with a traveler. It happened during the meal service, as most of these incidents do, when a passenger asked a benign question about the stuffed chicken entree: "What's it stuffed with?"

The way my source told it (I'm leaving her name out for obvious reasons) the aircraft was booked full, and the crew was stretched to the limit that day. By the time the flight attendant had reached this particular passenger, she was near her boiling point.

"IT'S STUFFED WITH STUFFING!" she roared, waving her hands precariously close to the passenger.

Moments later, the flight attendant was relieved of duty. No charges were filed against her, and she eventually quit her job.

"I think that's a rare exception," says Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines. "The majority of our 20,000 flight attendants do a great job. We serve 80 million passengers a year, and our flight attendants are committed to making it a pleasurable experience. Besides, flight attendants are only human beings."

Norman Fawcette, a jet engine craftsman stationed at Keflavik Naval Air Station in Iceland, says a frayed flight attendant went off on him on a recent US Airways flight.

It started as a quiet disagreement between Fawcette's brother-in-law and the flight attendant over headphones. When Fawcette tried to intervene on behalf of his relative, the flight attendant lost his patience, called him a liar, told him to "shut up" and threatened to "get the cops" when the aircraft landed.

"I did not become violent with attendants or crew members," says Fawcette. "I am not the kind of person who would intentionally aggravate the situation."

US Airways spokesman David Castelveter says the flight attendant overstepped his boundaries in at least one area. It's not up to the cabin crew to call police-that's a decision for the captain to make. "The flight attendants' responsibility is to ensure the safety of all the passengers on the flight. If they ever feel that any of those areas are in jeopardy, they must inform the captain," he told me.

"This is the classic man bites dog story," says Steven Simring, a psychologist and road rage expert at UMD-New Jersey Medical School in Newark, N.J. "We've heard a lot about passengers hitting flight attendants. I'm not surprised that it goes both ways."

According to airport and federal security officials, violence between flight attendants and passengers remains extremely rare. None of the 87 mid-air conflicts reported to the FAA in the last year and a half involve a passenger complaint against a flight attendant.

"If passengers are experiencing problems, they're reporting it outside our scope of influence," says Duane McGray, president of the Airport Law Enforcement Agencies Network, an organization for airport safety officials. "They may be filing complaints with air carriers. A lot of things happen on airlines that are never reported to the police."

I know from personal experience that airlines are not above bribing disgruntled passengers with free tickets, upgrades or passes to their first-class lounges. So just because these incidents aren't reported doesn't mean they didn't happen.

It's not surprising these conflicts arise. From the moment travelers board the aircraft, they're being herded down a narrow aisle into an even narrower seat, offered a meal that even cattle would turn down, and then shooed off the plane.

Flight attendants, meanwhile, must contend with ever-worsening working conditions. Crowded cabins and tougher schedules are making them more irritable than ever, according to the Association Of Flight Attendants in Washington, DC. "Basically, flight attendants are becoming edgier for the same reasons that passengers are becoming more violent," explains spokeswoman Jill Gallagher.

Do poor working conditions exonerate flight attendants? Not really. But it does make me wonder how much longer business travelers like us and the lawmakers we elected will let this go on before we insist on better conditions for passengers and flight attendants.

There must be a breaking point somewhere.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.