by Donald Wood
Last updated: 3:27 PM ET, Thu July 29, 2021
A new study found that around 85 percent of flight attendants in the United States have dealt with an unruly passenger incident in 2021.
According to data from The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO (AFA), 85 percent of the nearly 5,000 U.S. flight attendants surveyed were subjected to a physical incident over the last year, shedding more light on the increasing number of unruly passengers.
In addition, the study found that almost 60 percent of respondents said they had experienced at least five incidents of travelers misbehaving this year, while 17 percent reported the incident got physical.
Over 50 percent of the passengers involved in the incidents reportedly used racist, sexist and/or homophobic slurs. Out of the 3,615 unruly passenger reports received by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) since January, the vast majority (2,666) involved people who refused to wear masks.
"It is time to make the FAA 'zero tolerance' policy permanent," AFA-CWA President Sara Nelson said. "The Department of Justice to utilize existing statute to conduct criminal prosecution, and implement a series of actions proposed by our union to keep problems on the ground and respond effectively in the event of incidents."
Of the flight attendants across 30 airlines involved in an unruly passenger incident, 71 percent said they received no follow-up after filing a report with management. The report claims many respondents "did not observe efforts to address the rise in unruly passengers by their employers."
The flight attendants shared stories of being verbally accosted by drunk passengers, aggressive actions when enforcing mask mandates, physical confrontations, kicked seats, defiled restrooms and more.
"I've been yelled at, cursed at and threatened countless times in the last year and the most that has come out of it has been a temporary suspension of travel for the passenger," a flight attendant said in the survey. "We need real consequences if flight attendants are ever going to feel safe at work again."
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