I don’t know what makes anti-mask Trump jerks decide to make asses of themselves on planes, but they seem to be inspired to act out when they get on one. Flight attendants take the brunt of it:
One flight attendant needed medical attention for a crippling migraine brought on by confronting a passenger who refused to wear a mask.
The day after the siege on Capitol Hill, passengers on a shuttle bus with a Black flight attendant assailed her with racial slurs, according to a union for flight attendants.
Aviation safety officials have received dozens of confidential complaints in the past year from attendants trying to enforce mask safety rules. The reports, filed in the Aviation Safety Reporting System database, at times describe a chaotic, unhinged workplace where passengers regularly abuse airline employees.
“I felt like if this man is bold enough to scream ‘SHUT UP’ at me in the cabin, there is no limits,” a flight attendant said in one report.
The coronavirus pandemic and political divisions of the past year have caused fear, economic pain, and social and family rifts around the country, but for airline workers, and flight attendants in particular, the unease and tension have often converged in a tiny cabin space.
The tension is at a level flight attendants have not seen before, said Paul Hartshorn Jr., a veteran attendant and a spokesman for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants union.
“I think we’re pretty well trained on how to handle a disruptive passenger,” said Mr. Hartshorn, 46. “What we’re not trained to do and what we shouldn’t be dealing with is large groups of passengers inciting a riot with another group of passengers.”
“It’s insane,” he added.
Even as airlines have struggled to contend with the pandemic, attendants have increasingly faced problems from passengers attacking one another over politics.
Most prominently, before the Trump rally in Washington and the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, supporters of President Donald J. Trump were recorded on multiple flights to Washington heckling other passengers, including Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah.
On one packed American Airlines flight from Dallas to Washington on Jan. 5, Maranie R. Staab, a photojournalist flying to cover the rally, said that many of the passengers wearing red, white, and blue clothing and hats bearing Mr. Trump’s name, were quiet during the flight.
When the plane began descending, a passenger used a mini projector to flash an image of “Trump 2020” inside the darkened cabin. Ms. Staab said a Black passenger made a comment that clearly angered several Trump supporters, who accused him of threatening them.
“Stand up, boy,” one man said, according to a video Ms. Staab posted on Twitter.
“These are the guys we came to wipe out,” said a passenger, cursing as he held a small American flag.
When they got off the flight, Ms. Staab said she saw a group surround the Black passenger, and at the baggage claim, a flight attendant approached Ms. Staab and asked for her contact information. Several passengers had told the flight attendant that she should have done something about the Black passenger and said they would file a complaint.
“She seemed tough, but rattled,” Ms. Staab said.
In the aftermath of the riot, airlines, flight attendants and the authorities moved to prevent similar altercations. American Airlines crews were given access to private transportation during layovers in Washington-area airports. Delta barred six people from the airline after a group heckled Mr. Romney, according to a spokesman.
United Airlines moved its crews from downtown Washington hotels, and American Airlines, which had stopped serving alcohol in the main cabin because of the pandemic, also banned alcohol in first class for flights out of Washington.
I don’t think I ever saw this phenomenon before 2016 when it happened after Trump won! Maybe I’m wrong. There were, of course, the paranoid types who wanted people who “looked Muslim” booted from the planes. But this overt, in-your-face political advocacy for one man and the aggressive, hostility about it strikes me as something different. I think this shows that the impulses that drove that mob to the Capitol is more widespread than we might realize.
And, by the way, if this doesn’t creep you out you are stronger than I am:
Just don’t call it a cult. That would be totally wrong.