All the (air) rage

ROGER FRANKLIN says there's only so much air passengers can handle in small, crowded spaces.

The basic theory of aerodynamics - that air passing over a curved surface can lift a heavy body off the ground - is essentially a pretty simple concept, once you get a handle on it.

So why is it that the people who run and regulate America's airlines have so much trouble grasping a far more obvious example of cause and effect? It is this. If you take people's money, jam them like compacted trash into claustrophobic tin tubes, depart late, serve slop (if you serve food at all), and then dispense overpriced liquor at an effect-enhancing altitude of 30,000 feet, some passengers will get in a bad temper.

In a rational world, someone in authority might do something about it - insist, say, on wider seats and more reliable timetables. They might even stop the airlines hiring as cabin attendants the sort of people who would be much happier dissecting puppies in a medical research laboratory.

But this is America, where sanity is often in short supply. What other nation, for example, would have so much trouble drawing a causal link between the easy availability of pocket-size firearms and the large number of daily homicides?

So instead of passing laws to ease the aggravations and indignities being visited on millions of hapless air travellers, America has done what it always does - invented a brand new behavioural syndrome around which the psychobabblers and talk-show oracles can build thriving careers. The malady du jour is called air rage and it is, well, all the rage these days.

A quick check of an online database that indexes published news stories turns up hundreds of rage-related entries - all of which, when scanned at a glance, would seem to indicate that the US has come down with a case of terminal testiness and endemic irritability.

In the past year alone, along with better known manifestations like road rage and racial rage, there have been stories about office rage, school rage, golf rage, cyclist rage, gender rage, surf rage, steroid rage and, at the other end of the dysfunctional spectrum, beauty-parlour rage.

The undisputed champ, however, is air rage, which seems - again judging by news reports - to be more common than lost baggage, which is common indeed.

According to US government statistics, there were a mere 30 cases of airborne aggression seven years ago.

Last year, however, with the number of incidents said to be over 4000, airline safety officials were inviting TV news crews to watch them test a variety of restraining harnesses, electro-shock guns and sedative gases for subduing the unruly.

Part of the trend can be explained by deregulation, which has lowered fares on the most popular routes and allowed a decidedly less couth breed of passengers to take wing. Class and income, however, don't begin to explain the half of it - not when even an oily and unctuous televangelist like the Rev Robert Schuller can get himself busted for roughing up an attendant.

And then there was the case of millionaire Wall Streeter Gerald Finneran, who grew so irate on a flight from Buenos Aires to New York that he jumped up on the food trolley, dropped his pants and defecated all over the in-flight snacks. Finneran, who had the good grace to apologise when he sobered up, paid the $50,000 fine without batting an eye - a further indication that air rage isn't limited to those with underprivileged wallets.

So what's the reason? Let Marty Salfen, senior vice-president of the International Airline Passengers Association, explain: "You go to a ticket counter, there's a line at the ticket counter. You wait to board, there's a line to get on the airplane. Meal service is not what it was several years ago. And now you're on a full airplane, and you have fewer flight attendants."

If that was all the hardship flying entailed these days, it would be unpleasant but within the limits of tolerance. Salfen's summation, however, merely scratches the surface.

On a red-eye flight from Las Vegas to New York, for example, this reporter was herded aboard a plane in which every seat was filled. The aircraft pulled away from the terminal, moved about half a metre - and stopped dead. There we sat for some time. For over an hour in the sweltering desert heat, there was neither air conditioning nor the hint of an apology. When a passing attendant was asked to provide an explanation, she snapped: "You'll be told when the captain is ready."

After several more polite but persistent requests for information, the winged waitress had heard enough: "If you want to be arrested,"she hissed, "just keep on being a pain in the ass."

An announcement from the cockpit revealed that the delay had been caused, of all things, by a minor plumbing fault in a toilet hand basin.

Why weren't we allowed to disembark until the tap was fixed? It turns out that US airlines are rated on how closely they adhere to their posted schedules, so by moving no more than an arm's length from the terminal, the captain was able to report that he had started the journey "on time".

The rest of the trip was no better. The beer was warm, the overhead light didn't work, and a request for food elicited this response: "You again! We're not serving."

Which may have been for the best, for if there had been a food cart handy ...