Saturday, May 17, 2008
Blame the airlines for "air rage"; Greil Marcus takes a tasteless swipe at the Spin Doctors; Mr. Blue's bad advice to single mom.
Sep 14, 1999 | Flying in the age of air rage
BY ELLIOTT NEAL HESTER
(09/07/99)
Through their own actions, the airlines have created conditions that will predictably and reliably produce violent behavior in a segment of the mass population now flying. The airlines must take responsibility, and should act to 1) identify and reduce the possibility that violent outbreaks will occur under current conditions and 2) alter the conditions that create the violence. Otherwise, an informed and clever lawyer will be able to argue that the airline "provoked" violent behavior.
-- Denny Kernochan
Northridge, Calif.
Without minimizing what happened to Renee Sheffer, I submit that Salon could find more immediate topics to report on instead of hyping such a minimal "problem." My guess would be that flight crew are at greater risk of bodily injury in airport parking lots than they are while in flight.
According to the article, in 1998 there were 614 million airline passengers in the United States. David Fuscus of the ATA estimates that there were "at least 5,000 acts of passenger misconduct every year." By my hasty calculations, that means that a whopping 0.000814 percent of passengers were involved in these incidents. It's even more interesting to note that of the incidents Hester cites in his article, only five of them involved U.S. carriers.
Of all the things wrong with the current U.S. air travel industry, I'd have to put "air rage" pretty low on the list. Perhaps Hester could investigate the billions wasted by the FAA on its modernizations, or maybe he could discuss how airline employees can smuggle drugs and weapons without anyone at the airlines noticing until their coffee supplies are impacted.
-- Paul Robichaux
Customer rage is becoming more prevalent in both the service and retail industries. In my four years as an employee of a well-known national bookstore chain, I and my co-workers have been threatened physically, sexually harassed and called unprintable names, and have had dictionary-sized books thrown at us. Service and retail workers stand on the last frontier of people you can be legally abusive to. Hurray to those airlines adopting "zero tolerance" policies on incidents of rage. Companies and citizens should know that the customer is not always right.
-- Kimberly Bojanowski
I am shocked that in your examination of the "air rage" phenomenon, you use as your first and longest example the behavior of a mentally ill person. Yes, he was violent, and, yes, flight attendants and passengers were injured. But that man was not disgruntled at having to turn off his cell phone, being refused a drink or waiting in the long line while first-class passengers got in the short one at the ticket counter! That was not "air rage." The author's tone, including his use of quotation marks for "mentally ill" and "psychotic episode," indicate a disbelief in the reality of mental illness. Why else would he group together a man who was experiencing a traumatic event that he has no control over with those boorish people who violently attack others due to a minor irritation?
-- Mary Shillue
Somerville, Mass.
Real Life Rock Top 10
BY GREIL MARCUS
(09/07/99)
I have to say that I found Greil Marcus' recent dig at Chris Barron, in which he declares the best news of the week to be that Barron is suffering from paralysis of the vocal cords, to be unnecessarily cruel and in bad taste. While I personally will lose no sleep at the prospect of never hearing the Spin Doctors again, the real-life misfortune of an artist losing the tools of his trade, and a fellow human being the use of his voice, is a tragic event. Should Marcus' arms become paralyzed, I would hope that the recipients of his negative reviews would not publicly rejoice in his inability to type further columns.
-- Travis Hartnett
Austin, Texas
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