On a chartered flight from Cleveland to Las Vegas one July, flight attendants smelled smoke coming from one of the lavatories. Head flight attendant Robert Craig informed the woman who emerged from the lavatory that smoking on an aircraft is a federal offense; her response was a sneering, "Yeah, whatever." Craig then found cigarette butts scattered on the bathroom floor and discovered that the smoke detector had been tampered with. He called the police to have the woman arrested when the plane touched down in Las Vegas.

Upon arrival, the woman's mild-mannered companion accompanied the two to the front of the plane, where the officers were waiting for the smoker.

"Sir, could you step aside for a moment?" Craig asked the man as they reached the door. It was then that the quiet passenger suddenly went berserk. Spouting obscenities, he punched Craig in the face and slammed him against the cockpit door. "That was so unnecessary," says Craig, who suffered a pulled neck and a concussion from the brutal assault. "It was just another example of how people are becoming out of control."

In-flight assaults and verbal abuse -- commonly known as "air rage" -- received national attention in March 2000 when a crazed passenger broke into the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines jetliner bound for San Francisco and lunged for the controls before being subdued by the copilot, crew members, and other passengers. Although more terrifying than most attacks, the assault is among the untold number of air rage incidents reported in the past few years -- and the phenomenon appears to be on the rise.

In fact, the Association of Flight Attendants-Commuication Workers of America (AFA-CWA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have recorded hundreds of cases of abusive or disruptive passenger behavior on the major airlines each year over the past decade. A 1999 survey by OAG Business Travel found that 40 percent of business fliers polled said they had witnessed some form of verbal or physical abuse on flights in the past year.

Unlike most American workers, flight attendants are not yet under under the full protection of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) -- a fact that airline employees blame in part for the rise in cases of air rage and other safety problems.

"Not only are there no federal safety standards governing these kind of in-flight assaults, we have no industry-wide training or backup in dealing with them," says AFA-CWA member Robert Craig. The FAA has had jurisdiction over the safety of airline employees since 1975, but the AFA-CWA has long called for airline employees to be granted the same federal health and safety protections enjoyed by other workers.

In August 2000, OSHA and the FAA signed an agreement to improve working conditions for flight attendants. Three years later, in March 2003, the FAA announced the creation of a voluntary program in which airlines specify which OSHA protections they would provide. The AFA-CWA rejected this voluntary approach and sued the FAA in 2005, seeking to require OSHA regulation of the industry. The union lost their suit and their appeal.

Meanwhile, some flight attendants have taken action on their own. Rennee Sheffer, a flight attendant from Charlotte, North Carolina, founded the Skyrage Foundation with her husband after being attacked by a male passenger on US Airways -- an assault that caused her to suffer internal bleeding and require knee surgery. The foundation tracks international news reports of in-flight assaults and lobbies for better enforcement of existing safety regulations.

Deregulation may well have contributed to the rise in in-flight abuse. Patricia Friend, the international president of the AFA-CWA, says that cramped planes and frustrating delays, together with airlines' liberal alcohol policies and a society-wide decline in civility, make an explosive combination. "The reality of the crowded airplane and the reductions of in-flight service's amenities offered is completely the opposite of the advertising the airlines do, in which they advertise this wonderful, marvelous experience. You fail to meet people's expectations."

Some airlines have reacted to the AFA-CWA's concerns by eliminating a number of seats so passengers will be less crowded and less tense. Congress has passed the Safe and Friendly Skies Act of 1999, which increases the fines for assault and promotes public awareness that assaulting or threatening to assault a flight attendant or crewmember is a felony. And the AFA-CWA has issued advisories to the airlines recommending that they cap the number of drinks served to a single passenger and establish training programs on ways to deal with unruly passengers. The recommendations are not mandatory, however, and the flight attendants are still often left to fend for themselves in pacifying passengers or protecting themselves from an outright attack.

Air rage is only one of numerous hazards -- including hijackings and terrorism -- that flight attendants face on the job. As a result of lobbying by the AFA-CWA and new FAA regulations, airlines have improved working conditions over the years. Cigarette smoking has been banned on all domestic and most international flights, and there are no longer onerous weight or age restrictions for attendants. But flight attendants' health is threatened by such problems as heavy bags that fall out of overhead bins, unwieldy serving carts, cosmic radiation, sleep deprivation, accidents caused by turbulence, noise-related hearing loss, exposure to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, and cabin air contaminated by carbon monoxide and other toxins.

"Not enough outside air is being introduced into the cabin," says AFA-CWA researcher Judith (Anderson) Murawski. "We get so many complaints, anecdotal reports of employees with headaches, dizziness, and dry skin."

Les Dorr, an FAA spokesperson, says flight attendants have been given an open forum to present their concerns, which are now being analyzed by the agency. "We're looking at cabin air quality, we're looking at ergonomics -- which is a big issue with flight attendants -- hearing loss, carry-on baggage, toxic fumes in the cabin, cabin pressurization, and ventilation," Dorr says. "But before we can do anything, we need to have good hard scientific data. You cannot make rules on anecdotal evidence."

Meanwhile, the AFA-CWA plans to monitor the OSHA and the FAA to ensure that they heed their new promise to protect attendants. "Flight attendants who report to work fit and healthy are going home sick, unable to carry out their normal activities," says AFA-CWA president Friend. "And that's not right. We need the same federal protections as other workers."

-- Kristin Kloberdanz, M.A., a former associate editor for Consumer Health Interactive, is an editor at Book magazine in New York City.

Further Resources

Association of Flight Attendants-Communication Workers of America (AFA-CWA)
AFA-CWA is the world's largest flight attendant union, with 47,000 members at 26 airlines
202/434-1300
http://www.afanet.org

Federal Aviation Administration
The FAA has jurisdiction over the health and safety of airline workers.
866/835-5322
(You can also report possible safety problems to the FAA Safety Hotline at 800/255-1111.)
http://www.faa.gov

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
Established in 1970 by the Occupational Safety and Health Act, NIOSH is a federal research agency which makes recommendations to help employers prevent job-related injuries and illnesses.
800/232-4636
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
Part of the Department of Labor, OSHA develops and enforces safety and health regulations in the workplace.
800/321-6742
http://www.osha.gov

References

First published October 23, 2000
Last updated April 7, 2008
Copyright © 2000 Consumer Health Interactive