In recent months, videos of airline passengers misbehaving have become as much a fixture of pandemic life as masks and WFH athleisure. It seems that not a week goes by without police needing to escort an unruly passenger from a plane. Some altercations have taken a violent turn, with passengers punching and even biting flight attendants. Honestly, what has become of us (well, not so much "us" as "these fools," because I am an angel on the plane)?
As of July 27, there have been 3,615 reports of unruly passengers, per the Federal Aviation Administration — most of them due to refusal to comply with the federal mandate that requires masks on planes and public transportation. The FAA investigated only 183 such reports in 2020 and 146 in 2019, before the pandemic. And flight attendants seem to be on the receiving end of many of these incidents. Here’s how they want us to treat them, especially as more of us start feeling comfortable with flying again.
