Acting Up in the Air

By Daniel Eisenberg

Like any seasoned flight attendant, Fiona Weir has had her share of disgruntled passengers. But Steven Handy, 37, an unemployed Englishman who boarded an Airtours late-night flight from London to Spain six weeks ago, was a different breed. Apparently drunk at takeoff, he ignored Weir's warnings not to smoke in the lavatory, cursed her and demanded liquor, Weir says. Then, just as the plane was landing in Malaga, Handy reportedly smashed her over the head with a duty-free vodka bottle before being restrained by fellow passengers.

Unfortunately, Handy, who's out on bail pending an investigation in Spain, isn't the only traveler venting air rage. Ten days ago, a drunken, unruly Finnish passenger on a Malev Hungarian flight died after the crew reportedly strapped him to his seat and injected him with tranquilizers.

With record numbers of passengers taking to the skies and the busy holiday-travel season at hand, stressed-out travelers with less room to stretch are increasingly directing their anger at flight crews, punching an attendant, head butting a co-pilot or trying to break into the cockpit. "Passenger interference is the most pervasive security problem facing airlines," Captain Stephen Luckey of the Air Line Pilots Association testified before Congress. Though still relatively small, the number of incidents is estimated to have at least doubled in recent years. Nearly a thousand episodes took place within U.S. jurisdiction last year.

The airlines are finally fighting back. Leading the way is Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Atlantic Airways. In the aftermath of the assault on Weir, who required 18 stitches, Branson engineered a British lifetime air-travel ban on Handy. As the industry convened last month in London to address the overall problem, he urged carriers to establish a worldwide air-rage database to blacklist the worst offenders. "There [must] be a deterrent against this behavior," Branson says.

Some carriers have already taken action. Northwest Airlines has permanently blacklisted three violent travelers from flying. Yet prosecuting air rage isn't easy; many countries have no jurisdiction over a passenger who arrives on a foreign airline. In the U.S., the Justice Department is working harder to convict defendants; last summer a man who threw hot coffee on a flight attendant and tried to open an emergency door was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years in prison. This fall British Airways began handing out "warning cards" to anyone getting dangerously out of control. Some airlines include a pair of plastic handcuffs as standard onboard equipment, and flight attendants on KLM and USAirways undergo training to deal with aggressive behavior.

What accounts for this decline in decorum? Airlines run a virtually free, open bar in first and business class, where some of the nastiest episodes occur. The booze is supposed to keep customers calm but may be having the opposite effect on some. Others say being deprived of a different vice, cigarettes, is a major cause of unruliness. No wonder Austrian Airlines has said it will offer nicotine-substitute inhalers to passengers once a soon-to-come smoking ban takes effect. Then there are those who blame the airlines themselves. Says Hal Salfen, of the International Airline Passengers Association: "Flights are full, there are fewer flight attendants, and there's a general indifference toward the passenger." He sounds a little angry, doesn't he?

--By Daniel Eisenberg. With reporting by Helen Gibson/London

With reporting by Helen Gibson/London