Abusing the airline staff

[Dontcomeflyeithme]

Why is this such a big thing these days? It seems to be the same throughout all customer service roles.

We we're going on holiday this evening and witnessed a fully grown woman on our flight throwing a raging hissy fit at the cabin staff.

The reason for this was, the staff were moving a disabled person into the window seat to allow her to sit with her partner.

The woman refused to let them use the seat beside her and demanded the staff tell her why they were moving someone.

The staff explained that she had no right to know this other person's personal information. This resulted in a 10 minute screaming match.

Never in my life have I witnessed something so crazy. As far as I could tell she looked completely sober.

Then you had idiots shouting at the staff as there was no space directly above their head for the cases. What do people expect when they come on later?

What are these people hoping to achieve?

We recently returned from a short break in Europe. Flew with Ryanair - aware not everyone is a fan, but it is crystal clear when booking what you have paid for, and that any extras require additional payment.

Incoming flight - I had booked seats together for 3 teens (in one block) and me (first seat opposite across aisle). Get on to find woman causing merry hell, shouting and screaming that her 14yr old was in a seat a few rows away; refusing to put her carry-on in the locker and being verbally abusive to crew. Eventually calmed down enough to sit and as luck would have it was next to me. I was politely asked by crew if I would consider moving seats to enable her 14yr old to sit next to her. I (also politely) declined, as I had paid to ensure I was sitting with my party - 2 of us nervous fliers, plus 1 has some medical issues which benefit from adult supervision during flight. Would have had less issues swapping seats if I’d been travelling alone.

Woman not happy at this. I observed to her that not sitting together is a chance you take, if you’ve opted not to pay for seat selection. Her 14yr old son was then moved to his final seat by crew once everyone else had boarded, (a few rows further away) and was similarly abusive to them. Was very much hoping at this point that crew refused to let them fly, but unfortunately remained on. I had the pleasure of listening to her approx 6yr old old sitting next to her game on 3 different devices, loudly (shooting) without headphones, for the remainder of the flight. Didn’t bother her though, as she had a £600 pair of noise-cancelling headphones on - perhaps bought those with all the savings from previous flights on not booking seats!

Outgoing flight - latecomers moaning that they may have had to put their carry-on in locker perhaps 1 or 2 rows away from seat, refusing to fasten seatbelts, taking the piss loudly during safety demo. Family with children getting up to swap seats and try to fetch stuff out of lockers actually as the plane was taking off on the ascent! Verbal abuse to crew who had to get them back in their seats whilst at 45 degrees.
My son had back of his seat kicked continually by approx 10yr old who was old enough to know better, whilst parent just watched her.

The rudeness to airline staff (cabin crew and on ground) seems to be worse every time I fly, but not surprised by this as I’m an NHS medic, and we see exactly this too. And the litter - when crew make 2 passes with a large bin for you to put litter in, why exactly would you choose to just drop it on the floor instead?

DH is a captain, people are like this all the time. He’s so fed up of it now that he will just stop people flying, nobody should be treated like that at work. Honestly some of the stories of poor behaviour you wouldn’t believe!

@MalleusMaleficarumm glad to hear it!

Whilst poor behaviour towards crew cannot be excused, the now common practice of having to pay extra to select seats on most airlines (as opposed to just the no frills ones) is definitely a factor in this. People pay £X and therefore expect to be able to sit on their chosen seat.

I fly almost weekly for work, and the biggest issue is always cabin bags/stowage. I’ve seen a middle aged business man make a very young crew member cry when she politely told him his (huge) wheelie case would need to be stowed. In this case the seasoned London/Dublin commuters rallied around her and he was shamed into apologising.

So many years of being told we're not allowed to judge bad behaviour, we don't know what's going on in people's lives, etc etc. Bad behaviour should be judged, called out and receive consequences. Airlines need to start kicking people off planes (preferably after take off 😁) for drunken and/or aggressive behaviour. They need to also stop serving alcohol on board, and properly police alcohol service at airports. The thought of being caught on a flight with a drunken, abusive arsehole fills me with dread - been on a couple with stag/hen parties, loud, but luckily nothing worse, but in a restricted environment it's awful.

Good for him! More of the same and a few stories of bans/arrests in the press might help.

We live in Italy, and explosive, dramatic outburst are common place here. I've come to see it as a very transparent form of bullying, to get their own way. I just ignor it on the whole, which is taken as culturally odd (it's normal to shout back!) and it often descends into racism when they can't get a rise out of me.

Just yesterday, a women driving whist on her phone, smacked into a kid on a vespa sending him flying as he sat at a red traffic light. She got out and started screeming at him! Apparently he was an idiot for being in the middle of the lane, not off to one side.

To the best of my knowledge disabled passengers must sit in a window seat, so whether or not she’d booked one is irrelevant really. She might have booked an aisle seat but been moved when it became apparent she had mobility difficulty.

Regardless of that, the other passenger didn’t need to be a twat about it.

Watching all the morons getting tanked up in Weatherspoons pre-flight is something to behold.

Nobody should be allowed on a plane in that state.

I first started in retail over 20 years ago and you got a really difficult arsehole customer maybe twice a month if you were unlucky. Now, in the last few years it’s twice a shift or more sometimes. I mean rude, aggressive, patronising. Not even including the shoplifters…

I think there needs to be a national zero tolerance campaign. Where every business and service in every industry just boots these fuckers out and bans them for life from wherever they’ve been misbehaving: scream at someone in Sainsburys? Don’t want you back in here. Get pissed and abusive on an easyJet flight no more flying with them. Make your waitress in Wagamama’s uncomfortable with your creepy behaviour? Off you fuck. And mean it. Do the same when they kick off at hospital/school staff.

It depends on the airline and the disability, we always book special assistance as my husband has a physical disability, the only seat he can’t be in is the emergency exit rows. He almost always books and sits in an aisle seat.

Anyone who doesn't just sit down and and fuck up on public transport needs a good shoeing TBH.

We got an early morning Eurostar last weekend and there was a drunken stag party of men. They were a right PITA, shouting loudly, swapping seats, playing some sort of stupid board game in the aisle.

One of them tried to grab my thigh as I was walking past them with two hot drinks. They quietened down a bit when I said firmly and tartly "do that again and you'll get hot tea over your head and a complaint to the crew for sexual harrassment".

I used to be horrified at China's social credit system, but I'm starting to think we need something similar.

I hate to see drunk people being held up by friends still managing to make it onto a flight. Staff are more focused on the size of bags.

There is simply no respect or tolerance for any kind of authority or rules at all nowadays, along with an absolutely breathtakingly arrogant level of self obsession and entitlement.
This is perpetuated by a palpable level of over-the-top aggression underpinning society at the moment.

No matter what anyone says, no matter what ‘problem’ they have, this behaviour is a choice that people make. Poor mental health, the cost of living, etc are not excuses to behave like this. They may be reasons, but the behaviour is not acceptable. We all have a choice in how we behave. Respect, tolerance, accountability, morality, self-responsibility all seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Social media is one of the greatest toxins of the modern world. It drives, feeds and encourages shitty behaviour. There are zero consequences for behaving like a total arsehole. Intelligent people are being silenced so as not to offend stupid people. More stupid people than intelligent people are having children, and more crap parents are having more children than good parents are. It will only get worse.

I think there's a bit of truth to that, booze and sometimes pills don"t help.

A lot of people are anxious flyers and how often is the advice offered on-line, including MN, something along the lines of either "take xxx", or you see comments such as "I'm fine after a couple of glasses of wine"...

Some of the crowds in airport bars might also be a manifestation of that..

And bad behaviour onboard isn't new, but as flying has boomed we see more of it, and of course these days is all captured on phones.

I think this is the result of an increase in individualism. We see on here that people who are kind and considerate of others are labelled people pleasers, pushovers etc when actually all they are being is ‘nice people’. But this seems to be considered a weakness now.

The natural consequence of that is that people become more selfish and when their needs aren’t met, they don’t look at the bigger picture but dig their heels in instead. Of course most of this won’t end in arguments but add the right conditions (alcohol being one of them, maybe a bad day, maybe hangry and hormones) and people are more likely to kick off because they’re so focussed on themselves.

<waits to be lambasted by all the people who think kindness is a weakness>

These are someone’s child.

So if you have a 30 year old being a knob there must have been crap parenting within the 60 yr old ish consortium as well.

And their crap parenting happened before social media so they can’t even blame that!

Freedom of speech does not equal freedom of consequences.

I work in probate and I adore my job but I've taken a lot of abuse recently from grabby relatives moaning at not being paid quickly enough for their liking.

I was cabin crew for 6 months when I was in my 20's I didn't last any longer than that. Ibwas sick to death of bad behaviour. People screaming for more drinks as we were actually landing, men going for my bum, boob's, drunken screeching, fights. I went back to nursing for a rest.

My son is a pilot and had to arrange for some drunken revellers to be escorted off the aircraft upon arrival, several weeks ago. Their behaviour was disgusting, they ruined the flight of the passengers around them and were abusive to cabin crew. Had they not been close enough to the destination, there was serious discussion about redirecting the flight.

When the police arrived onboard, a couple of the female offenders in the group promptly burst into tears when they realised they may well be spending some, if not all of their holiday in a Spanish jail. After the whole group were escorted off, it was discovered they had intentionally poured their mixers over and smeared food all over their seats in petty revenge.

I sincerely hope this would result in a lifetime ban from that particular airline.

I'm getting my own personal taste of that currently. My brother is in Australia and has never been a good communicator, but since my mother died and I became executor of her estate I'm suddenly hearing much more from him than I have for years - but on one theme only, i.e. how much is he going to get and when. I'm so pissed off, I really don't care if I never hear from him again.

Any sort of bad behaviour is now excused, starting from home and school. See the other thread where a woman didn’t show up for a dinner party after the host cooked specially for her, and didn’t send apologies or phone the host. It took about half a page to get to the apologists to arrive with “she must be struggling mentally”, “she is probably tired from visiting family”, “could she be neurodivergent”?