Have you been on a plane recently? What was the vibe? Was everybody super chill, patient, and kind to each other in the airport and plane aisles? Yeah, didn’t think so.
‘Air rage,’ which is like road rage but at 30,000 feet, is apparently on the rise in Canada, with much of the anger having to do with the new rules and regulations that have come out of the pandemic. It turns out some people really don’t like being told to wear a mask mid flight.
In a new report, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) found that incidents involving disruptive airline passengers doubled in 2020 and continued to take off through 2021.
“One explanation for the hike in incidents is that the context has changed,” says Tim Colehan, Assistant Director, Government and Industry Affairs at IATA. “Not wearing a mask is arguably no different to not wearing a seatbelt or not putting your laptop away. They involve a failure to follow instructions. But because of the pandemic and the public health implications, not wearing a mask makes it much more personal and has caused confrontation between passengers.”
Canadian airlines reported around 200 disruptive passenger incidents per month this past summer as more people were starting to fly more frequently. For context, that’s four times more than it had been just a few months earlier in April and May 2021.
While certain individuals are pissed about having to keep their mask on during their flight, experts say and common sense agrees that this amped up aggression puts airline employees at risk for unnecessary confrontation.
“Even when there is no incident, every time you have to walk down the aisle … you always have to be on guard and always have to be worried about things that you normally wouldn’t be,” Troy Winters, a health and safety officer at the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents thousands of Canadian airline employees, told CTV.
“I’m not going to say it’s every flight, but I’m going to say it’s definitely by far the majority of flights where they have to have a conversation [about masks] at least once.”
Traveling via plane is stressful at the best of times, but if you’re one of those Kevins who plans on holding up an entire flight because you’re demanding that women’s underwear is a suitable facemask, know that the rest of us aren’t impressed.
