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For a clear snapshot of the decline of the human condition, spending some time at the airport and then having to fly in a thin tube at 35,000 feet with about 120 total strangers for a few hours is a picture of the times.
Besides being felt up by the T.S.A., having flights canceled… and now abiding to made-up COVID rules, such as sitting next to a person with a mask on and taking it off when eating and drinking to stop the spread of the coronavirus, a rough flight has become a hard landing. And of course, socially distancing when boarding and unboarding despite being jammed into the aircraft… a previously stressful flight has become much more stressful.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that domestic flight attendants have reported a significant increase in unruly passengers over the summer months. The report, citing a survey of 5,000 flight attendants, said 85 percent have said they had to deal with uncontrollable passengers the past year, and 17 percent said the interactions even got physical.
The Federal Aviation Administration told The Journal that it has received 3,615 reports of unruly passengers since January and investigated 610 cases. So far, 95 penalties have been issued. To put it into perspective, the agency previously issued 150 investigations stemming from similar incidents. The vast majority of new cases—2,666—resulted in passengers refusing to comply with mask mandates. Alcohol consumption also is believed to have played a significant role in these interactions.
The Journal’s report pointed out that many travelers are emerging from a year of lockdowns and could be finding it challenging to reemerge in close quarters with strangers.
The number of interactions between flight attendants and these passengers is believed to be much higher than reported.
Sara Nelson, head of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA), a flight attendants union, said, “More than [70%] of the flight attendants [who responded to the survey] say that when they’ve reported this, they have not seen follow-up from management. That doesn’t mean the report didn’t go to the FAA, but the flight attendants are not getting any follow-up.”
TREND FORECAST: Bad times will keep getting worse as airlines cut back on services to make up for the billions lost when the COVID War began in the winter of 2020. And as Gerald Celente, the publisher of the Trends Journal, has long said, COVID-19 lockdowns, job losses, mask mandates, social distancing, etc., will eventually lead to more people snapping. He said, “When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”