The Covid era’s surge in air rage incidents is aiding flight attendants’ demand for a benefit they’ve been seeking since 9/11 — legally mandated self-defense training.

A provision in a major Senate aviation policy bill would require airlines to train flight attendants to “subdue and restrain” an attacker and defend themselves against weapons. The proposal comes after an unprecedented upswing in confrontations with unruly air passengers since 2020, which have forced flight crews to contend with everything from near-stabbings to broken teeth.

“Obviously the last three years have given us ample reasons for why self defense is an important part of training for flight attendants,” said Taylor Garland, a spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants, a union that has pushed for the training mandate.

Airlines in the past have argued that the costs of federal security mandates, including additional training, should fall on the government rather than private enterprise. The major U.S. airlines and their main trade group did not comment when asked their positions on the current Senate language.

“The airlines were always loath to pay for it,” said former Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who chaired the House Transportation Committee until early this year and led its aviation panel in 2001. DeFazio is now senior strategic advisor to lobbying firm Summit Strategies, though he has said he has no plans to register as a lobbyist.

He called airline opposition to paid self-defense training “irresponsible,” saying that “giving the training — particularly given the uptick of incidents — could be very, very useful and potentially avoid an incident at some point that could be catastrophic.”

Airlines for America, a trade group representing most major commercial airlines, said in a statement that “safety and security of passengers and employees is the top priority.” The group did not answer directly when asked if it supports or opposes the updated flight crew training requirement as written in the Senate bill.

The group said its members “train their crew members and other frontline employees in de-escalation techniques so that self-defense is used as a last resort,” and noted that its airlines “have partnered” with the Transportation Security Administration in support of an optional self-defense training course “for many years.”

United Airlines declined to comment. Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines directed POLITICO to Airlines For America. Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines did not respond to requests for comment.

Existing law already requires airlines to train their flight crews, including on self defense. But some flight attendants say the current requirement, as written, allows too much room for interpretation.

  • Echo71Niner@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Airline keeps increasing prices, reducing size of the chair and the leg space, offers you no-snacks or meals on any flight 5 hours and under, over sell seats on purpose, never run on time, never clean plane in between flights, cancel flights, are now hiring door bouncers as flight attendants - cause who the fuck wants to pay to train their staff, am i right?

    • Whiskey Pickle@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      those are certainly all valid points.

      but there’s another side to this: the rise in extremely shitty and entitled attitudes that people in general have regarding their behaviors in public spaces, that being a creeping breakdown in basic civility and decorum.

      I remember a time when people would just get onto a plane, sit down, and endure their flight. air travel has never been particularly comfortable or enjoyable. there was always an unspoken social contract between fellow travelers to at least do what we could to not make it worse for each other, but now? so many people don’t give a damn about how their actions affect others, often taking very selfish action at the expense of others’ comfort which push the boundaries of even the most understanding person’s patience.

      removing smelly shoes, eating pungent foods, and engaging in many other annoying or obnoxious behaviors that air travelers simply would not have done 5-10 years ago at a far higher rate with a “fuck you” attitude isn’t something you can simply blame on smaller seats and less legroom. combine that with a flagrant disregard for in-flight staff and their instructions or attempts to de-escalate to the point of engaging in violence has reached outrageous levels. bigger seats with more legroom and serving in-flight meals isn’t going to make these people stop acting like animals. whatever it is that caused these people to believe that acting like entitled assholes is ok now did not originate from airlines trying to squeeze out a profit, even though it may be a contributing factor to making everyone else miserable.

      the people who act this way ON the plane act this way OFF the plane, too.

      • Chrome@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This echos for healthcare workers and social services too. You can’t imagine the physical and verbal abuse. Especially if you work in the ED. Where I work, we have self-defense and workplace violence training every year. Statistics say something like 30-60% have been assaulted before (a very easy Google). There’s so much more that goes un-reported.

        And yeah, sometimes it’s the legitimate agitated patient with altered mental status, but more than often it’s just shitty entitled people who would normally go to jail, except they do it in the hospital setting and it gets swept under the rug. Because management sucks, and police sucks.

        • jeffw@lemmy.worldOPM
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          1 year ago

          Weird how all these people get assaulted, yet police shoot someone 10 times when they’re still 10 feet away and unarmed

        • kamasutures@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’m in the service industry, specifically a nightclub setting, and these folks are feral now. I have a lot more fear of getting shot or stabbed than I ever did previous to covid.

      • Surp@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Ooof weird take…planes should definitely have a little more comfortable seating. Fuck sitting down and “taking it” like you say.

        • cristo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          How could you read everything that guy wrote and your takeaway was to completely misunderstand it. It almost seems deliberate on your part. Please leave that attitude with Reddit, be normal here.

          • Surp@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            “I remember a time when people would just get onto a plane, sit down, and endure their flight. air travel has never been particularly comfortable or enjoyable.”

            Pretty sure when they said this part? We don’t have to take that crap from airlines, just don’t fly. Keep your weird attitude on reddit? Didn’t know opinions about others opinions weren’t allowed here.

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Part of what adds to the situation is that you can never actually talk to the people responsible for making “the system” the way it is. Instead you interact with low level employees, or sometimes actual bots that have no say in “the system” while the people who make the decisions aren’t even inconvenienced by having the knowledge of what the plebs think about the decisions they made.

          All of the pain of the tradeoffs of their decisions are borne by someone other than them, and they are surrounded by sycophants and cheerleaders for making them.

          Tl;Dr: I very much relate to Dennis’s fictional frustrations in the current season’s episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where he tries to take a mental health day.

  • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    They just need an alert that says “seat 21c is being a fuckwit, all charges below murder and permanent disfigurement and injury are temporarily suspended. Subdue 21c!”

    Then a red light turns on and doom music starts playing, and duct tape drops out of all the overheads.

    Guarantee most riders would be immediately at their feet with duct tape in hand

  • RatherBeMTB@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Has anybody thought about making flying a good experience? I used to travel a lot before 9/11, after that it was once or twice a year and mostly one or two weeks, then COVID hit and everything stopped. After COVID, every trip has been a nightmare where absolutely no one is responsible for anything. Traveling is not for me anymore. Maybe in the not so distant future it will get better.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    They also need to be paid for the entire time they are in the plane, not just when the fucking wheels are off the ground.

  • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Maybe treating airline passengers like people would help. Some self defense courses wouldn’t hurt, but there’s a definite slippery slope of escalating violence even more.

    • Moc@lemmy.world
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      No amount of treating a belligerent anti-masker with empathy will help.

      That’s just an example, but if a person chooses to actively ignore society’s rules and reacts violently when you try to stop them, there’s nothing treating them “like people” will do.

    • iforgotmyinstance@lemmy.world
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      How much leeway are we giving? Right now people just get violent and we have to tolerate it until a federally approved person comes on the plane and deals with it.

      If you intervene, you get charged. If you fight back, you get charged. If you get pushed by the violent person into a flight attendant, you get charged and no fly listed.

      We have given conservatives so much runway, how much more do we have to build before they fly away and leave us the fuck alone?

      • lud@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        PUT ON YOUR SEAT BELT YOU HAVE 20 SECONDS TO COMPLY!

        YOU NOW HAVE 15 SECONDS TO COMPLY! YOU ARE IN DIRECT VIOLATION OF FAA ORDER 15!

        YOU NOW HAVE 5 SECONDS TO COMPLY!

        FOUR

        THREE

        TWO

        ONE

        I AM NOW AUTHORIZED TO USE PHYSICALLY FORCE!