The Covid era’s surge in air rage incidents is aiding flight attendants’ demand for a benefit they’ve been seeking since 9/11 — legally mandated self-defense training.
A provision in a major Senate aviation policy bill would require airlines to train flight attendants to “subdue and restrain” an attacker and defend themselves against weapons. The proposal comes after an unprecedented upswing in confrontations with unruly air passengers since 2020, which have forced flight crews to contend with everything from near-stabbings to broken teeth.
“Obviously the last three years have given us ample reasons for why self defense is an important part of training for flight attendants,” said Taylor Garland, a spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants, a union that has pushed for the training mandate.
Airlines in the past have argued that the costs of federal security mandates, including additional training, should fall on the government rather than private enterprise. The major U.S. airlines and their main trade group did not comment when asked their positions on the current Senate language.
“The airlines were always loath to pay for it,” said former Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who chaired the House Transportation Committee until early this year and led its aviation panel in 2001. DeFazio is now senior strategic advisor to lobbying firm Summit Strategies, though he has said he has no plans to register as a lobbyist.
He called airline opposition to paid self-defense training “irresponsible,” saying that “giving the training — particularly given the uptick of incidents — could be very, very useful and potentially avoid an incident at some point that could be catastrophic.”
Airlines for America, a trade group representing most major commercial airlines, said in a statement that “safety and security of passengers and employees is the top priority.” The group did not answer directly when asked if it supports or opposes the updated flight crew training requirement as written in the Senate bill.
The group said its members “train their crew members and other frontline employees in de-escalation techniques so that self-defense is used as a last resort,” and noted that its airlines “have partnered” with the Transportation Security Administration in support of an optional self-defense training course “for many years.”
United Airlines declined to comment. Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines directed POLITICO to Airlines For America. Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines did not respond to requests for comment.
Existing law already requires airlines to train their flight crews, including on self defense. But some flight attendants say the current requirement, as written, allows too much room for interpretation.
Airline keeps increasing prices, reducing size of the chair and the leg space, offers you no-snacks or meals on any flight 5 hours and under, over sell seats on purpose, never run on time, never clean plane in between flights, cancel flights, are now hiring door bouncers as flight attendants - cause who the fuck wants to pay to train their staff, am i right?
those are certainly all valid points.
but there’s another side to this: the rise in extremely shitty and entitled attitudes that people in general have regarding their behaviors in public spaces, that being a creeping breakdown in basic civility and decorum.
I remember a time when people would just get onto a plane, sit down, and endure their flight. air travel has never been particularly comfortable or enjoyable. there was always an unspoken social contract between fellow travelers to at least do what we could to not make it worse for each other, but now? so many people don’t give a damn about how their actions affect others, often taking very selfish action at the expense of others’ comfort which push the boundaries of even the most understanding person’s patience.
removing smelly shoes, eating pungent foods, and engaging in many other annoying or obnoxious behaviors that air travelers simply would not have done 5-10 years ago at a far higher rate with a “fuck you” attitude isn’t something you can simply blame on smaller seats and less legroom. combine that with a flagrant disregard for in-flight staff and their instructions or attempts to de-escalate to the point of engaging in violence has reached outrageous levels. bigger seats with more legroom and serving in-flight meals isn’t going to make these people stop acting like animals. whatever it is that caused these people to believe that acting like entitled assholes is ok now did not originate from airlines trying to squeeze out a profit, even though it may be a contributing factor to making everyone else miserable.
the people who act this way ON the plane act this way OFF the plane, too.
This echos for healthcare workers and social services too. You can’t imagine the physical and verbal abuse. Especially if you work in the ED. Where I work, we have self-defense and workplace violence training every year. Statistics say something like 30-60% have been assaulted before (a very easy Google). There’s so much more that goes un-reported.
And yeah, sometimes it’s the legitimate agitated patient with altered mental status, but more than often it’s just shitty entitled people who would normally go to jail, except they do it in the hospital setting and it gets swept under the rug. Because management sucks, and police sucks.
Weird how all these people get assaulted, yet police shoot someone 10 times when they’re still 10 feet away and unarmed
I’m in the service industry, specifically a nightclub setting, and these folks are feral now. I have a lot more fear of getting shot or stabbed than I ever did previous to covid.
The social contract is slowly breaking down.
Hmm, what event could possibly have occurred then to legitimize being an open, raging asshole with absolutely no consequences…
🙄
People have GOT to stop blaming Trump for every damn thing. Generally speaking the tearing social fabric started LONG before 2016. As it relates specifically to Air Travel I took my first Commercial Flight in 1980 and things were pretty damn good right up until 9/11 and its been getting worse ever since.
Not Trump. Harambe.
Ah yes, I hadn’t considered the Harambe Incident.
Exactly, Trumpism didn’t cause it, it’s a symptom. There’s a reason why Trump was elected I 2016 and not in the 1980s or 90s.
It started WAY before that. 2016 was a symptom.
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Disagree.
I travel weekly for work, and sitting upright in the seats is awful. Everybody should recline when able, and then everyone will have the same amount of room as before, and everyone gets a more comfortable experience.
Hm. I’m of two minds on this.
I’m a tall guy (6’4) and when the person in front of me reclines it brings the top of their sear closer, but the lower part moves forward creating more space for my stupid long legs. I can actually move my knees around and reposition instead of having to be angled towards one side the whole time.
But, I never recline myself. I try to be very polite and courteous to strangers when interacting, but overall I’d rather not have to interact at all. So I’ve never asked the person behind me. Without that information, I can’t be sure what they’d prefer. Then, since so much in our society is treated as “zero sum”, if I don’t take my option to recline, my “suffering” must mean their pleasure, right?
That’s what goes through my head anyway. Writing it all out, it sounds like nonsense.
You’re probably right, and paired with my experience being “reclined on” it likely is best for everyone if we all recline. I’ll try it on my next flight and see how it goes. Maybe I’ll even ask the stranger behind me…
I’m very tall and I sincerely disagree with your first claim. The person in front of me reclining brings the back of their chair directly into my knees, I don’t need leg room I need knee room. If I then recline it pushes the bottom of my chair forward making it even worse. It is literally the worst of all possible solutions for me.
Fair enough! I’m sure our experiences vary. I don’t really fly that often (maybe a couple trips a year, at most). Also you say “very tall” which I’d assume is taller than me, from context.
Plus I think it also depends on airline - some of them tout their coach legroom. So I’m sure that’s different too.
Ooof weird take…planes should definitely have a little more comfortable seating. Fuck sitting down and “taking it” like you say.
literally nobody said that.
How could you read everything that guy wrote and your takeaway was to completely misunderstand it. It almost seems deliberate on your part. Please leave that attitude with Reddit, be normal here.
“I remember a time when people would just get onto a plane, sit down, and endure their flight. air travel has never been particularly comfortable or enjoyable.”
Pretty sure when they said this part? We don’t have to take that crap from airlines, just don’t fly. Keep your weird attitude on reddit? Didn’t know opinions about others opinions weren’t allowed here.
To be fair, the flight attendants aren’t the ones doing any of that.
Service industry workers getting harassed for their management’s shitty decisions, as usual.
Part of what adds to the situation is that you can never actually talk to the people responsible for making “the system” the way it is. Instead you interact with low level employees, or sometimes actual bots that have no say in “the system” while the people who make the decisions aren’t even inconvenienced by having the knowledge of what the plebs think about the decisions they made.
All of the pain of the tradeoffs of their decisions are borne by someone other than them, and they are surrounded by sycophants and cheerleaders for making them.
Tl;Dr: I very much relate to Dennis’s fictional frustrations in the current season’s episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where he tries to take a mental health day.
Just got back from vacation yesterday and the only true part of that in my experience from the past few years is the increased prices.
I used to work at an international airport. Once, when a plane arrived they discovered that one of the passengers had likely died of natural causes before landing. They had him removed and the doctor obliged by declaring him dead on the jet bridge, rather than on the plane.
Apparently, if a passenger is declared dead on the plane, they have to do a thorough clean. This would have caused a delay. Delays cost money. Thanks to him officially having died on the jet bridge, no thorough clean was required. The cleaning staff removed the excess rubbish, and some lucky passenger unknowingly got to fly in the dead passenger’s seat less than half an hour later.
I suppose I should have been more appalled, but this happened for a low cost airline. I never felt too much sympathy for passengers who paid significantly less for their flight, often a flight that could have been a train ride that didn’t kill the planet, invariably treated ground staff like shit, then complained when the budget airline offered them budget service.
Not that the business class passengers were much better. Like the VIP who deliberately shoved a pregnant colleague with his trolley, but wasn’t banned from BA, because he was a gold member or something stupid like that.
often a flight that could have been a train ride
I see you’ve never been to America.
And if you don’t feel the need to treat the people with dignity who use a cheaper airline, then you probably shouldn’t be working for a cheaper airline. Everyone should be treated with respect until they prove they don’t deserve it.
Everyone should be treated with respect until they prove they don’t deserve it
They proved they didn’t deserve respect by flying with airlines which are infamous for treating staff poorly, ignoring and outright breaking labour laws, regularly fucking over customers, and by flying relatively short distances rather (than taking a train, bus or even car) and being part of the problem when it comes to climate change.
Obviously, I know this is a hard truth, but if someone sees a kid drowning but chooses to eat an ice cream rather than help they’re evil. Most people do that on a daily basis because the kid’s drowning far away and off-screen. Why should underpaid employees have respect for customers who support a company that fucks people over, when its their turn to get fucked over?
They could instead earn some respect by buying a ticket with a regular airline that treats its staff properly, or by taking the train because although it takes a bit longer you’re not killing the planet.
then you probably shouldn’t be working for a cheaper airlines
Most groundstaff work for a handler, not the airline itself. So in this case the cheap airline subcontracted my company to board and deboard the plane, take care of luggage etc. But crucially, the cheap airlines didn’t pay us to handle complaints or deal with delays. So when a flight was cancelled, as often happened because they knowingly flew a schedule which was far too tight, customers would be left stranded and be told to call a call centre somewhere on a paying number. Once again, it’s hard to sympathise, given these customers knew that this happened regularly, yet still went ahead and bought the cheap tickets anyway. We would however hand out little fliers and explain their rights under EU law. Said airlines would regularly flout the law when it came to legally required compensation. Obviously that’s no different in the US.
In any case, you get what you pay for. Of course, this was only a short term starter job. They didn’t pay enough to retain staff long term. This is common in the industry, which is why you’ll occassionally hear stories about a kid sneaking past the gate and end up in the wrong destination or someone getting sucked into an engine. Staff would turn up drunk or high, not bother to check documents properly, not enter the weight of luggage correctly leading to balance issues, that kind of thing. You pay McDonalds wages you get McDonalds level employees. Have a safe flight!
They proved they didn’t deserve respect by flying with airlines which are infamous for treating staff poorly, ignoring and outright breaking labour laws, regularly fucking over customers
A) they didn’t necessarily know all of these things… Not everyone sees every bit of news about airlines, and certainly nobody bothers to compile it all to rank them (not even journalists do this that I’m aware of)
B) to a large extent, every single airline has problems in the US… Every major carrier has problems with staff treatment, labor law violations, and customer service issues
C) some people are poor, and when you’re working for a living, speedy travel is very important because you don’t have the paid time off to accommodate very shitty alternative transit options (even if you have the money, which is also a question mark)
I did not know that was a rule, and I wonder if they’ve removed deceased person to declare him dead off the plane and avoid cleaning.
Apparently, if a passenger is declared dead on the plane, they have to do a thorough clean.
Now they are fight attendants
Took me a second, ngl
They just need an alert that says “seat 21c is being a fuckwit, all charges below murder and permanent disfigurement and injury are temporarily suspended. Subdue 21c!”
Then a red light turns on and doom music starts playing, and duct tape drops out of all the overheads.
Guarantee most riders would be immediately at their feet with duct tape in hand
Only if we get to have the full
trainplane battler experience
They also need to be paid for the entire time they are in the plane, not just when the fucking wheels are off the ground.
Has anybody thought about making flying a good experience? I used to travel a lot before 9/11, after that it was once or twice a year and mostly one or two weeks, then COVID hit and everything stopped. After COVID, every trip has been a nightmare where absolutely no one is responsible for anything. Traveling is not for me anymore. Maybe in the not so distant future it will get better.
No, that would make the line go down, it’s better to let a flight attendant get beat up.
Maybe treating airline passengers like people would help. Some self defense courses wouldn’t hurt, but there’s a definite slippery slope of escalating violence even more.
No amount of treating a belligerent anti-masker with empathy will help.
That’s just an example, but if a person chooses to actively ignore society’s rules and reacts violently when you try to stop them, there’s nothing treating them “like people” will do.
How much leeway are we giving? Right now people just get violent and we have to tolerate it until a federally approved person comes on the plane and deals with it.
If you intervene, you get charged. If you fight back, you get charged. If you get pushed by the violent person into a flight attendant, you get charged and no fly listed.
We have given conservatives so much runway, how much more do we have to build before they fly away and leave us the fuck alone?
The 2040’s will be wild when flight attendent start gunning us down like cops.
PUT ON YOUR SEAT BELT YOU HAVE 20 SECONDS TO COMPLY!
YOU NOW HAVE 15 SECONDS TO COMPLY! YOU ARE IN DIRECT VIOLATION OF FAA ORDER 15!
YOU NOW HAVE 5 SECONDS TO COMPLY!
FOUR
THREE
TWO
ONE
I AM NOW AUTHORIZED TO USE PHYSICALLY FORCE!
I wonder in how many of those incidents the passenger was drunk
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95% of the time it was every time.
But you’re right, a mate is an A320 captain and unruly pax are 98% of the time somewhat intoxicated. The 2 remaining % are just stupid people thinking they are above anyone else (like rushing to stand up right after landing to be first out and have a smoke on the tarmac while waiting for his family, yeah true story).
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So, you’re okay with flight crews dealing with near-stabbings and broken teeth then?
I think we can find some balance between not killing someone over cold nuts and letting an abused worker class defend themselves.
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wtf is “the Real”?
the vast moronity of ai travelers can behave like civilized people, even when annoyed by the burdens of air travel, and news flash: it always sucked. I’ve flown for over 40 years, and even before 9/11 TSA security theater, before the shrinking seats and legroom and lack of inflight meals, flying was uncomfortable, tedious and awful. The difference today? an increasing sector of society believe they’re entitled to act like selfish assholes all the time and that the price of an airline ticket entitles them to treat the entire plane like their own home where they’re allowed to act, do, and say whatever they want, regardless of how the actions and behaviors affect anyone else— worse, because they know (or think) that, once in the air, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them. It’s that kind of entitled, selfish, and childish mindset that makes them believe they can lash out and attack others without consequences when the flight crew tries to hold them accountable.
THAT is the problem now, and the discomfort of flying just makes these horrible people worse, it’s not what caused them in the first place. And people who act this way on flights also act this way in restaurants, subways and busses, movie theaters, and other public spaces where they selfishly don’t give a damn how there behavior affects others.
the airlines can be blamed for making flying uncomfortable but not for the fact that these people are selfish assholes who resort to violence when confronted.
Remind me not to fly whatever airline you’re using…
I think that you have come to the wrong conclusion here. People who can spend first class money are generally less likely to stab somebody just because they’re frustrated.
I have ridiculously long legs, and am uncomfortable every time I fly, but I have never felt the desire to assault anybody over it.
consider that you live in a country where private security killing shoplifters is legal.
LOLNO. What are you talking about?
