CNN – Writer Amelia Mularz was on a Chicago-to-Los Angeles redeye earlier this year when a very drunk passenger plopped into the seat next to hers.
As the plane pulled back from the gate, the man ran to the bathroom and, she says, threw up so much that a cleaning crew had to be called in from the airport. The passenger was then removed from the flight and the plane took off an hour late.
But Mularz is far from being the only passenger who has been a first-hand witness to bad plane behavior.
“Inflight passenger disruptions have never been — and will never be — tolerated.”
When University of Texas at Dallas criminology professor Lynne M. Vieraitis analyzed years’ worth of in-flight passenger incident reports, she found one common theme.
“Alcohol. Alcohol. Alcohol.”
Vieraitis and her colleague Sheryl Skaggs went through 1,600 complaints filed with the Aviation Safety Reporting System, breaking down reports about misbehaving passengers into categories such as verbal abuse, physical violence and sexual harassment.
“People getting into fights, people arguing with each other, not putting luggage away, not listening to directions — alcohol. Sexual assault and harassment — alcohol. The overwhelming thing reported in all these narratives was alcohol.”
That news may not come as a shock to anyone who has witnessed a badly behaved passenger up close.
According to a report from the Institute of Alcohol Studies, 60% of adults from the UK say that they have dealt with drunk plane passengers, and 51% of those surveyed believe there is a “serious problem” with intoxicated travelers on flights.
Stories about drunk fliers abound. There was the man who tried to open the plane’s emergency door mid-flight and was duct-taped into his seat, and the off-duty pilot who caused chaos on an Alaska Airlines plane last year …
