Something nasty in the air

It is the eve of America's July 4th celebrations - I don't know it yet, but the fireworks are about to start early. I'm on Aer Lingus flight EI 136 from Boston to Dublin with my husband and three young children. We're basking in the after-glow of the best holiday of our lives. We're feeling sleepy and looking forward to a restful flight. Then the trouble starts.

What we are expecting to be a calm, overnight journey, rapidly foments into something approaching guerrilla theatre. Until now, air rage has always been something that happens to other people - like Glaswegian football supporters and Gazza. Then suddenly, in little more than a breath, our lives take on all the pathos of a cheap tabloid headline.

In the rows of seats immediately ahead of us, some teenagers aged 14, 15 and 16 have managed to thwart the law and get their hands on a quart of duty-free Smirnoff Blue Label vodka (you must be 21 or over to buy alcohol in duty free in Boston; asking for proof of age is at the discretion of the sales staff) The lads are partying happily. (An adult in charge of them later admits he knew the boys had bottles of vodka and gin in their possession, but trusted them not to open them.)

Before long, two lads near us are stripped to the waist and fighting each other as lads will when they've had a few too many - especially when they're little more than children. When I tell a cabin crew member that I have seen them with a vodka bottle, the crew goes into action.

At first the boys deny having the booze, but when their behaviour persists, a feisty female crew member searches their bags, as she has the right to do, and removes the bottle. The lads aren't too happy about it, but the all-female crew handle them with the kind of skilful diplomacy employed by UN troops in Lebanon.

For a moment, all seems well. However, once they are left alone again, the boys' behaviour becomes intimidating and we get the feeling that anything could happen. As I write, I feel like an old biddy complaining about the loathsome behaviour of "young people today". But being in the confines of an aeroplane cabin beside drunk and fighting youths is completely different from confronting the same behaviour in an open space. In the street, or even in a pub, you can walk away. But, 35,000 feet up, on EI 136, I feel trapped like the fireflies we caught in bottles on our holiday. Strapped into my seat and doing my best to ignore the goings-on, while also remaining alert to the possibility of one of the lads toppling onto my sleeping child, I am an easy target for the bully-boys should they choose to focus on me. Which one of them does, in a most threatening manner - because he had seen me make the complaint.

I and my husband avoid trouble by moving to the back of the plane. This forces us to spend the rest of the flight separated from our two sleeping daughters, so that the cabin crew have to keep an eye on them. I don't like it, but under the circumstances it seems best not to wake the children, since there is nowhere else for them to lie down.

Several of the crew stop to tell us how appalled they are at the incident. One stewardess remarks that "flights are getting too cheap". The lads get sick in the toilets and pass out. "You'd almost feel sorry for them, considering what they're going to wake up to," says a stewardess as she passes the seats where they lie unconscious.

The captain summons us to the cockpit, and as a gorgeous red dawn breaks over the Western hemisphere, he tells us exactly what the lads are going to wake up to: a Garda escort and a stern talking to.

Aer Lingus is tough on bad behaviour - and getting tougher. Handcuffs are kept on aeroplanes and they're used, most recently on a Dublin-Chicago flight. A passenger was jailed for six months last October by a British court for causing affray on an Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to London.

Aer Lingus doesn't keep track of the total number of run-of-the-mill unpleasant incidents on its flights. A spokesman said that there were about a dozen "serious" air rage incidents each year, where police are asked to meet the plane and Aer Lingus presses charges. Such a figure may not, however, reflect the true extent of anti-social behaviour.

Aer Lingus points out that it carries six million passengers a year and that, in this context, incidents are few. It adds that air rage is on the increase on all airlines. "Air rage is a growing problem and there is no scientific research giving us the reason," says an Aer Lingus spokesman.

There are theories, however. Alcohol is the most obvious source of air rage, particularly since its effects are accentuated at altitude. But drunkenness is by no means the only cause. Other suggested triggers include nicotine withdrawal (due to smoking bans), poor air quality, and the anxiety of travelling. Aer Lingus points out that as flight becomes cheaper, there are more first-time flyers and many find the experience emotionally stressful. There is nothing normal about hurtling in a metal tube 35,000 feet above the earth. Several air rage incidents on Aer Lingus have involved not drunkenness, but emotional disturbance.

Flight used to be seen as glamorous, but increasingly it is about as attractive as an afternoon spent sitting in Busarus. There are the hurdles of long drives to airports, finding parking places, long delays for flights, huge distances to travel between gates and terminals, crying children, missed connections, long queues, hunger, testy passengers. You'd need to be a saint not to be affected.

Aer Lingus tries to prevent air rage by keeping passengers feeling content and by keeping potential offenders off its flights. Aer Lingus told The Irish Times that cabin crews are trained to preempt trouble by making eye contact with passengers and sensing whether they are nervous, disturbed or drunk. Even before passengers board the plane, they are subtly assessed. Between the ticket desk, the check-in counter and the gate, Aer Lingus staff have plenty of opportunities to judge the emotional states of passengers - but sometimes it's a close call.

Aer Lingus may come down on the side of the boisterous passengers whom some fellow passengers hate to fly with. That's what happened in the case of a Glasgow flight that made headlines. In that case, Aer Lingus admits that staff had to make a judgment call on whether noisy football supporters waiting to board the plane were "simply exuberant or likely to threaten the flight". Glasgow police were called in to advise and recommended that the supporters be allowed to fly.

But once in the air, many of their fellow passengers weren't happy at being forced to listen to the football supporters' carry-on all the way to Dublin. "One person's exuberance is another person's penance," says the Aer Lingus spokesman. You can say that again.

Having experienced air rage first hand, I think all passengers over the age of 12 should be breathalysed before boarding (a measure which Aer Lingus says is impractical). I would also suggest that bottles of alcohol be banned from the cabin, and alcohol consumption limited to the drink served by cabin crew, who can control the flow, so to speak. Again, Aer Lingus says this would be impossible to enforce, but I don't see why duty free purchases could not be kept in a separate part of the cabin and distributed after landing. It would not stop all air rage incidents, but it would stop a few.

Being realistic, there is very little consumers can do other than complain. As air rage incidents multiply, air travel will increasingly be a matter of picking your flights and taking your chances.