Behaving Badly At 32,000 Feet.

That back seat pocket in front of you can often contain a lot more frightening things of interest than the airline in flight magazine.

Disgusting trash, toenail clippings, mushy meals, chewed tobacco juice spit, dirty nappies, half eaten food and candy - and that's just a few of the more disgusting ones.

Psychologists say that when people board an aircraft they can become 'psychologically off-kilter' and more likely to do silly and unreasonable things they normally would not dream of doing.

Nose picking, drink throwing and general tantrum like behaviour are all favourites. Of course the Mile High Club (sex in the sky) is also popular with first class passengers mainly.

But why? Many people blame the non-smoking rule and others blame alcohol. However, it has been shown that even people on non-alcohol serving airlines, like those in the Middle East, can behave badly.

There are other reasons and the airlines are mainly to blame. Too many people forced to share confined spaces; maybe the quality of the food sometimes (or lack of it on many airlines these days( and delays.

All of which adds up to an attitude by customers that airlines have little emotional attachment to them so why not behave badly and trash their airplanes in return?

It's all a bit sad, specially for the poor flight attendants who have to dodge flying glasses of drink, put up with abuse from stressed mothers trying to shut little Johnnie up because he is disturbing the passengers and wrestling alcohol fuelled men and women to the floor. Some airlines carry handcuffs and strait jackets.

The only saving grace is that punishment for such behaviour can be quite severe. Like paying the cost of a Boeing 747 diverting to an unscheduled airport to offload the offending person.

That could be one very expensive extra drink.

Wednesday, 11th August 2010 at 2:28am

By Alastair Carthew, a former aviation employee, newspaper and television journalist. He is a freelance writer and consultant living on Phuket. Click here to go directly to his website: www.acprcounsel.com.