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.
I was literally just arguing with someone a couple weeks ago here about how while you can recline on a plane, it’s generally not an okay thing to do because there’s a person behind you who has significantly less space. No matter how many different ways I tried to explain it to them it always came back to basically “but I deserve my space”.
They’re just unaware other people exist at all. But god knows if someone reclined into them they’d be complaining about it for days.
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.
Ooof weird take…planes should definitely have a little more comfortable seating. Fuck sitting down and “taking it” like you say.
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.
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.
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.
@ZombieTheZombieCat @Hyperreality
Working service industry jobs where you’re expected to treat assholes like kings and queens can make you hard.
Maybe we should be training passengers to not be assholes.
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!
Now they are fight attendants
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 train plane 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.
