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Cabin Fever Rages
The Travel Critic · February 23, 1998

A flight attendant is slapped while he serves dinner. A crew member gets punched before takeoff. And a drunken passenger blows his stack after he's denied a martini, then uses a meal cart as his lavatory.

Sound like scene from an Airplane sequel?

If only it were. Passengers are losing their cool more than ever on planes. Assaults on crew members rose 5 percent from 1995 to 1996, and although the numbers aren't yet in for last year, the Association of Flight Attendants in Washington, D.C., confirms that the trend shows no sign of slowing.

"Maybe it's the fuller planes or the reduced service," says union spokeswoman Jill Gallagher. "But we've had several very serious incidents recently that have been compared to road rage."

Cabin fever, as some are now calling it, is infectious.

Last month, on a flight from Los Angeles, a passenger walloped a flight attendant's thigh because there were no more chicken entrees for dinner. "Yeah, I punched him hard with my fist," the traveler reportedly laughed afterwards.

Another recent case involved a traveler who was asked to remove his radio headset while the aircraft taxied on the runway. He struck the male flight attendant so hard that he sent him into the next row of seats. The passenger was escorted off the plane by deputies in Boston.

Patient zero of modern-day cabin fever was a man police reports describe as "Mr. Finneran." On Oct. 20, 1995, when crew members denied him another drink, the already intoxicated man "pulled his pants and underwear down and proceeded to defecate on the floor, cart and in the lav sink in the bathroom," according to the report.

What's happening here? Chris Marquet, a New York-based senior managing director for corporate travel consultants Kroll Associates, believes cabin fever is the inevitable result of airline greed.

"Space is tight. Planes are full," he explains. "When there are delays, when the flight's crowded, and you've got a lot of people in a small area, you've got the potential for some airline rage."

Doctors agree. Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical school, and author of the book Worry: Controlling It and Using it Wisely says cabin fever is spreading because of poor flying conditions.

"Not only am I seeing this in my practice, but I'm also seeing it in my life, when I get on a plane," he says. "Vulnerability, decreased power and control, can lead to unplanned, irrational and sometimes violent reactions."

Whittier, Calif.-based road rage expert Dr. Arnold Nerenberg even suggests that cabin fever is the first sign of a breakdown in society. "Passengers have lost respect for the pilot, the flight attendants and each other, and this is what happens," he says.

Still, why is this becoming a problem now? Airlines have always cared more about profits than people. And many flights, even when load factors were way down, operated at full capacity.

Alcohol and cigarettes may offer one answer. Drinks are freely available in-flight. Flight attendants estimate that about half of the passenger-related incidents are related to alcohol consumption. Eight years ago, smoking was banned on all domestic flights, depriving many passengers of a nicotine fix-and making them more irritable.

But these are partial explanations at best. One of the most disturbing theories about the outbreak of cabin fever belongs to US Airways flight attendant Kenji Nozawa, the crewmember pummeled by the earphone-wearing passenger last year. He thinks frequent flier programs are indirectly triggering the aggressive behavior.

"It's the business travelers who are misbehaving," he says. "The more frequent flier points they build up, the worse they get. They think they have unlimited power. They don't think the rules apply to them."

The road warriors haul too many carry-ons on board-"sometimes five or six at a time," says Nozawa-harass other passengers and make outrageous demands on the crew.

I never thought of mileage programs as hazardous. Addictive, yes. But dangerous?

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.