I’ve only come across a few cases of genuine air rage. On each occassion we as crew have been able to defuse the situation and all ended ok. I agree with Mongu, how the situattion is dealt with at the time is crucial. You can’t go in all guns blazing and expect nothing to happen. Tact and empathy normally works for me.

What I think we as crew have to appreciate is that we have no idea how the pax is feeling and what has happened to them prior to boarding our aircraft. They might have emotional problems for example. No two pax are the same. Things that might seem trivial to one person are huge to another and before you know it you have an incident that gets out of control.

I think too much alchohol can be a cause for some but I have seen pax stay up all night on a 12 hour flight, drinking constantly then leave the aircraft as though they’d slept the whole flight! Others, one G and T and they start shouting around the cabin. You just can’t tell. There’s a very fine line when it comes to refusing to serve a pax alchohol.

In answer to an earlier question, yes we do have restraing equipment onboard but it is only to be used as a very last resort and only with the Captains permission. In 15 years of flying I have never had to use it.

Fly safe