Flight Attendants Report Rise in Assaults by Passengers as Airline Staffing Levels Fall

From a testy Saudi princess to a rowdy bunch of Englishmen, airline employees are seeing what they say is growing lawlessness in the air among passengers.

Some passengers say declining service is making them fighting mad.

“I can think of a couple of times when stewardesses and stewards were maybe having a bad day,” said Ted Castello, a frequent traveler and sales manager of a Belleville, Ill., office supply company.

A growing number of passengers who don’t like the quality of cabin service are resorting to verbal abuse and assaults on flight attendants, according to airline employees.

Federal law requires at least one flight attendant for every 50 seats aboard a plane. Major airlines have historically exceeded that, but staffing levels have been falling closer to the minimum as carriers cut costs.

“You have declining meal service, you’ve lessened the number of flight attendants on given flights and you don’t have the service you had even a year or two ago,” said Marty Salfen, senior vice president of the International Airline Passengers Assn. “Some people are frustrated.”

They’re taking it out on innocent people, said Mary Kay Hanke, vice president of the Assn. of Flight Attendants.

“If passengers are having an adverse reaction to the service, they need to contact the carrier with their complaints and remember that the flight attendant is there for safety,” she said angrily. “There is never a reason for crew interference.”

The union says the problem is worsening, and it has begun to collect reports of in-flight assaults. The Federal Aviation Administration tracks only incidents that interfere with the flight, and that can range from arguments to hijackings. The agency could not immediately provide the number of such incidents.

There have been several confrontations recently.

In October, a 58-year-old investment banker allegedly threatened a United Airlines flight attendant and shoved another into a seat when they refused to serve him another drink aboard a plane en route from Buenos Aires to New York.

Authorities say Gerard B. Finneran of Greenwich, Conn., then poured himself drinks and defecated on a food-service cart, using linen napkins as toilet paper.

Finneran, who denied the allegations, was freed on $100,000 bond and was ordered to undergo evaluation for alcohol abuse and get a federal prosecutor’s permission before boarding a commercial flight. He is awaiting trial.

In December, 18 British travelers started a food fight when attendants refused to serve them any more liquor aboard a Northwest Airlines jet. Airline officials said children were sent to steal liquor from beverage carts. Other passengers, including three Olympic wrestlers, helped subdue the rowdies.

Seventeen of the Britons were sent back to London; the remaining traveler, Michael Purcell, pleaded guilty to hitting a flight attendant, spent a month in jail and was deported.

Most recently, Salwa Qahanti, a 43-year-old Saudi princess, was placed on six months’ unsupervised probation and ordered to pay $500 after being charged with scratching the arm of a TWA flight attendant on a plane from Paris to Boston.

“I don’t care if you work at Burger King or you work in the air, [an assault] is the worst thing that could happen,” said the flight attendant, Sheri Albert.

The Assn. of Flight Attendants is urging members to report assaults and is pressing management and the government to help.

“The carriers have an obligation to make sure flight attendants have training in how to deal with the unruly passenger,” Hanke said. “And unless there is follow-up by the FBI and by the government to prosecute these cases to the fullest, they leave us less security the next time this occurs.”