Amid the airline industry's failure to meet the rise in post-pandemic travel, there has also been an increase in passengers behaving badly onboard.
Everything from verbal abuse of flight attendants to outright violence has been on the rise. While the annual report from the International Air Transport Association identified one "unruly passenger incident" for every 835 U.S. flights in 2021, the number rose to one for every 568 flights by 2022.
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A particularly harrowing incident occurred when, on Aug. 20, an American Airlines (AAL) -) flight to New York from Miami was forced to make an emergency landing in Jacksonville, Fla., just 30 minutes into the flight after a bottle of pepper spray "inadvertently" went off inside the cabin.
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The flight attendant 'came by to ask who was sprayed by who'
While the airline officially confirmed only that a "disruptive incident involving a customer" occurred aboard the plane, a fellow traveler later described that a passenger had "intentionally reached her arm out to spray the other family" on Reddit.
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"The teenage son of the suspect (the mom) was seated by the window," the traveler under the r/Lost_Ad_4562 username described. "The mom was in the middle and the husband on the aisle. One of them intentionally reached her arm out to spray the other family. I didn't see, but others on the flight saw and pointed out the mom when the FA [flight attendant] came by to ask what was sprayed by who.”
While there's no way to guarantee that the traveler behind the post was truly on the flight, the person claims that there was no way the incident was not "intentional in some way" given that pepper spray bottles are designed in a way that makes them impossible to accidentally set off.
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"It was incredibly scary not being able to breathe, having burning skin/eyes, having everyone panicking around, and being stuck in a small space; we also didn't get a lot of direction on how to take care of ourselves once we were off the plane," the traveler under the r/Lost_Ad_4562 username described.
According to details released by American Airlines and flight-tracking websites, a cleaning crew cleaned up the plane in Jacksonville and it continued its journey to New York's LaGuardia Airport without further incident.
As pepper-spray is one of the items that is unquestionably prohibited from being brought inside the cabin by the Transportation Security Administration, it is unclear how the bottle made it aboard anyway. The Federal Aviation Administration has undertaken an investigation of the incident but no information on whether the suspect was handed fines or charges is yet available yet.
The passenger on Reddit, however, said that they believe a younger traveler's diaper might have been "a catalyst for how everything played out."
"Right before the incident, there was a strong smell of poop," the user described further. "I thought someone farted but then it lingered more and wasn't sure if it was the bathroom or the baby behind me. Then when the air got bad, my first thought was that the bathroom was malfunctioning and we were breathing toxic chemicals.”
