I am old friends with a recently retired airline crew member of a flag carrier of an Asian country. He does not regret his decision to stay on the ground after 46 years of flying. For once, he does not have to deal with wakefulness at night, inability to sleep long hours during the day, eating breakfast at dinner time, and leaving for early morning flights because of various time zones. With the recent goings in air travel, I’m sure he is just thankful he accepted that prized gold watch given to retiring airline crew.

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has about 2,900 reports of in-flight unruly behaviour of passengers, 2,200 of which relate to the wearing of masks, wrote CNN’s Dean Obeidallah on June 13, 2021.  Last month, NBC news reported that a Southwest passenger seriously assaulted a female flight attendant, knocking two teeth, after being told repeatedly to follow inflight instructions. The passenger was taken into custody upon arrival at the destination.

The FAA fines for misbehaving during flights are steep. And this is just about fines we’re talking about. Legal suits do not figure in the discussion. One passenger who grabbed and struck 2 flight attendants faces $32,750 in fines, while another passenger who hit a flight attendant with his bags has been fined $16,500. The largest fine was to a passenger who grabbed the arm of a flight attendant causing her pain and struck twice the arm of another flight attendant, threw alcohol bottle and food and ignored the mask mandate of the airline. JetBlue Airways had to return to Dominican Republic because of this unruliness during the flight. These were all reported by Gregory Wallace and Pete Muntean of CNN last May 5th, 2021.

Forbes in an article by Ben Baldanza on June 7, 2021, analyzes these incidents and gives 4 reasons why they happen. First, there are fewer frequent travellers on board and current travellers are not familiar with the rules of flying. Second, the wearing of masks during flights has triggered strong resistance in some travellers. I think we can all agree that masks are uncomfortable to wear, takes getting used to, and being asked to wear one while seated in flight can be too much for some. Many travellers who haven’t flown in a while do not understand this mask mandate while flying or just refuse to wear masks  Third, pandemic fatigue. Some non-frequent flyers get antsy when they have little or no control over what’s happening when they travel by air. They don’t understand that air travel means conforming to the rules of the airline and argue that their freedom is diminished, rights violated. Fourth, violence is everywhere. It is shown on tv, written about in digital news, even played in video games. Is it any wonder this is carried over in planes during a flight?

Let’s not forget, air travel is risky. Accidents happen while you’re flying. Deaths occur. Being selfish is not the way to behave in a man-made contraption. Planes make me aware of my mortality. The last thing I want to do while travelling by air is to get angry over some thing I have no control over. When I fly, the pilot is my God because it is in his hands that my life rests.

As of this writing, Canada has not opened yet its borders to tourists. Our international airports process flights carrying returning residents. Ontario just reopened its borders with Manitoba and Quebec this past Wednesday, June 16th. Most of the above inflight incidents occurred in domestic flights in the US. When I first arrived in this country, I noticed not just the natural rawness of the parks but also the way roads and bridges were built. I expressed this in a conversation with an acquaintance and was surprised by his reply: the engineers and planners who built what you are seeing now looked at the infrastructure of the US and improved on them. On the same vein, Canadians are now watching these air rages in the US and probably saying to themselves, we are not going to do that. As one American observer said it succinctly: Canada is doing better in the vaccination rollouts, has outpaced Israel and the US, because it has a different culture.

In the pic, a Canadian passport (photo by Ricky Castellvi)