{"id":694632,"date":"2026-07-16T10:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T10:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/694632\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T10:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T10:32:09","slug":"the-secret-lives-of-flight-attendants-british-passengers-always-drink-like-theyve-never-drunk-before-airline-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/694632\/","title":{"rendered":"The secret lives of flight attendants: \u2018British passengers always drink like they\u2019ve never drunk before\u2019 | Airline industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, right at the start of this year\u2019s holiday season, a 30-year-old drunk British holidaymaker tried to kiss a male flight attendant on a plane, spent a week in Mallorca presumably thinking his actions were consequence-free, and was then arrested on his way back<\/a> through Palma airport. In February, Jet2 banned two passengers from the airline for life<\/a> after a mid-air brawl on a flight from Turkey to Manchester, and last week BA had to cancel a flight back from Barbados<\/a>, because (some) members of the crew were still too drunk from the hotel bar to operate it. There\u2019s a connection between these incidents, and it\u2019s not just as flight attendant Thomas, 27, puts it: \u201cWell, drunk Brits \u2013 you know how that goes\u201d.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cair rage\u201d was coined in the 90s, but the behaviour it describes went through the roof post-Covid. In 2021, the number of reported incidents in the US was greater than in the previous three decades combined<\/a>. A new category of misdemeanour had appeared \u2013 mask non-compliance.<\/p>\n

One of the main flashpoints is passengers not sitting down when they\u2019re told to. Photograph: Posed by models; enviromantic\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Incident numbers aren\u2019t collected in the UK, only numbers of prosecutions, but the International Air Transport Association (IATA) warns this is a poor metric, because of jurisdictional gaps: something that\u2019s illegal in the airline\u2019s country \u2013 racist abuse, say \u2013 might not be illegal where the plane lands, and often people arrested on touchdown are released without charge<\/a>. But last month the UK government was in talks with the industry about permanently banning abusive passengers from all airlines. <\/a>At the moment, an airline can issue a lifetime ban but it can\u2019t share your data with any other airline, meaning difficult passengers are free to book elsewhere.<\/p>\n

double quotation markIt\u2019s very rare that anyone, especially female or female presenting, hasn\u2019t been harassed<\/p>\n

Unite, the union representing most cabin crew, which has 30,000 female members in the sector, last year found that 34% of women had been sexually assaulted at work <\/a>(this includes ground staff); 67% had experienced unwanted flirting, gesturing or sexual remarks; 65% had been the recipient of sexually offensive jokes; 55% had been inappropriately touched; and 40% had been shared or shown pornographic images by a manager, colleague or third party, such as a passenger. This is grave news for the industry, not least because, from this October, third-party harassment rules will come into effect<\/a>, so the response described by many flight attendants \u2013 management shrugging off passenger behaviour because they\u2019ll never see them again \u2013 will simply not (forgive it) fly.<\/p>\n

Drink is not the only factor, but it plays a significant role. Clara, 26, who has worked with low-budget airlines for more than two years, breaks it down: stag parties are worse than any other kind of party, summer is worse than winter, Ibiza is worse than Bruges. But overall, \u201cAnglo-Saxons love to drink. As soon as Brits get to the airport, they start drinking. It almost feels like [they think of] an aircraft as a place where people are supposed to consume things. They drink like they\u2019ve never drunk before. Polish people drink quite a lot, too, but they hold their alcohol really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are a huge amount of people simply behaving as if they\u2019re in a club, she goes on. \u201cThey\u2019ll say things like, \u2018You\u2019re really cute,\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019ve never seen such a beautiful flight attendant\u2019; they\u2019ll offer you a drink, ask for your Instagram.\u201d Social media has opened up new terrain for intrusive behaviour. Thomas has a colleague who was tracked down on Instagram by a guy who had seen her name badge. \u201cMy job attracts sexual harassment and I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d fully class what I\u2019ve experienced as assault, but it\u2019s very rare that anyone, especially female or female presenting, hasn\u2019t been harassed,\u201d says Emma, who has worked for a full-service carrier (AKA an upmarket airline) for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

\u2018Anglo-Saxons love to drink,\u2019 say flight attendants. Photograph: Posed by models; AVI stock\/Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n

Employees, female and male, report relentless harassment on their way to and from work, simply because they\u2019re wearing the uniform. \u201cI always wore a fleece over my clothes and changed into trainers \u2013 it\u2019s unthinkable to walk around in uniform \u2013 and all my colleagues say the same thing,\u201d says Clara. That attention isn\u2019t always sexual, she adds; it can be just staring or asking stupid questions. One response to the Unite questionnaire about the extent of sexual harassment, noted that it came \u201cmainly from pilots, passengers or [while] commuting to work\u201d. When you stand back from that for a second, it means \u201cbasically everyone\u201d.<\/p>\n

Thomas notes that, putting actual sex aside, \u201cpassengers\u2019 attitudes towards the cabin crew change a lot depending on your sex.\u201d It\u2019s almost as if some pre-civilisation male-supremacist brain kicks in at altitude, with passengers refusing to accept the authority of female staff. \u201cI\u2019ve seen it several times that there were tensions during boarding, and strangely enough, as soon as I show up, things calm down. Let\u2019s say that when you have the kind of build society expects from a man, and you walk over frowning a little, that alone is often enough to solve the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

That peculiar atmosphere \u2013 an inescapable, claustrophobic metal tube, in which half the people are behaving as though it\u2019s 3am in a nightclub, a fifth are sober and doing a job, and the rest are either ignoring it or engaged in some other vexatious behaviour \u2013 can mean bad behaviour extends to colleagues, too. Clara had a colleague who would say \u201cYou\u2019re going to be my future wife\u201d to all the women. \u201cEvery time he\u2019d grab me by the arm, I\u2019d look at him and say, \u2018Patrick, we don\u2019t really touch each other between colleagues.\u2019 The time that really stuck with me, we were near the toilets. I saw him come out, moving his tongue to mime cunnilingus. It was so surreal.\u201d She didn\u2019t put in a complaint; cabin crew across the sector, from the most budget airlines to BA, report that when they\u2019re sexually harassed or assaulted by colleagues, managers do nothing.<\/p>\n

Things can get so tense between crew members that they\u2019re assaulting each other while still in the air. Sergei, 27, has worked for a budget airline for four years while he trains to be a pilot, and was recently called back to a flight because, \u201cI needed to separate the number one [cabin manager] and number two [deputy] on the flight; they were fighting each other, biting and scratching, so I had to keep them at separate ends of the plane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Employees, female and male, report harassment \u2013 simply because they wear a uniform. Photograph: Posed by models; Narongrit Sritana\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

There was a period of stability around smoking, when everyone knew they couldn\u2019t and didn\u2019t push it \u2013 though Sergei had one passenger claim to have a certificate from his doctor saying he needed to smoke. \u201cI said, \u2018OK, where is it?\u2019 And there was no certificate.\u201d Then vaping arrived. It is impossible to overstate how many people think you can vape in a plane toilet without setting off the smoke alarm. Passengers are constantly being arrested on arrival, having been caught vaping. Sergei decides whether or not to call the police based on whether people own up or not. \u201cIf they do, I let it go; they\u2019re human, I\u2019m human. But one man set off the smoke alarm in the toilet, so I went to investigate and he had the vape in his hand, but denied it. I said, \u2018Well how did you manage to set off the alarm?\u2019, and his girlfriend said, \u2018By farting.\u2019\u201d The couple were still screaming abuse at Sergei on the ground, as the guy was being arrested.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, the main flashpoint is not sitting down when you\u2019re told to, and the reason this gets so heated is largely economic: if you fall over during takeoff, landing or turbulence, the airline is liable for your not-at-all-unlikely injury. \u201cSo we need to tell them to sit down,\u201d Sergei says, \u201cand we need to be assertive. It can create an atmosphere that\u2019s like the army.\u201d<\/p>\n

And how often are you told you can\u2019t go for a pee when you want to? \u201cI was torn one time,\u201d Clara says. \u201cA child needed the toilet, and the father got so angry that he told his son to wee into a bottle. But when they got off the plane, he threw the bottle of urine at my colleagues. He just tossed it at them like, \u2018Here, you deal with it,\u2019 the way you\u2019d throw something to a dog.\u201d Another guy got so furious he urinated on the cabin door.<\/p>\n

Since we\u2019re on the subject of economics, another factor at play is the relentless degradation of conditions. Much of this is down to an ongoing struggle to make savings, which has intensified during recent fuel price hikes. Certain airlines now have a 25-minute turnaround target between landing and taking off again, which wouldn\u2019t be long enough to clean the plane even if the flight attendants were paid to do so, which in many cases they aren\u2019t. The scenes cabin crew have seen \u2013 dirty nappies, excrement smeared on the toilet walls, crisps everywhere, all that dirty-protest urine, of course \u2013 make Thomas\u2019s otherwise quite nihilistic conclusion probably the right one: \u201cWhen you\u2019re really exposed to every part of the population, you see that there are some really good people, but there are also completely filthy slobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s not something you could do your whole life.\u2019 Photograph: nuttapong\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The job is more punishing than many may realise, physically and emotionally. \u201cThe jet lag, the very early starts, the very late finishes, and the aircraft\u2019s cabin pressurisation all take a toll on your body,\u201d Clara says. \u201cWhen you do four takeoffs and four landings in the same day, it\u2019s exhausting. It\u2019s not really something you could do for your whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas says: \u201cWhen you spend eight to 12 hours shut inside a metal tube in the sky, it\u2019s not like being in an office with a colleague you don\u2019t like. You can\u2019t just step outside for a smoke.\u201d And the market intercedes once again, to make everything slightly worse (this is mainly on budget carriers): some pay commission on in-flight sales, so crew start to clash when the senior puts someone else on bottled water so they can sell the bloody marys themselves. Clara has seen a cabin manager \u201cso busy selling perfume that the pilots had to perform a go-around (when an aircraft aborts its landing procedure and returns to the air). That costs the airline thousands. Applying full power and climbing away again burns an enormous amount of fuel. On top of that, you\u2019re paying for your parking stand at the airport for longer. Commission honestly makes people stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rise in air rage, then, feels less surprising the closer you look: in any given flight, some people will be on their very last nerve. Some because they\u2019re on their 10th pint; others because they\u2019re mindful of how high the stakes are, which you sometimes forget until someone\u2019s head gets sucked out of an aircraft window (which happened last weekend<\/a>). The real puzzle is why there\u2019s not more air rage in the other direction; no, not Bristol to Krakow \u2013 crew to passengers.
Additional reporting by Ethel Pemberton-Girard<\/p>\n

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