Jet Blue flight atten­dant Steven Slater made news yes­ter­day when he exited a plane via the inflat­able exit chute fol­low­ing an alter­ca­tion with a pas­sen­ger. Accord­ing to the New York Times “the pas­sen­ger cursed at Mr. Slater, he grabbed the inter­com, cursed her out, bid pas­sen­gers good­bye, grabbed a beer and acti­vated the inflat­able exit chute.” Slater’s court appointed lawyer says the pas­sen­ger was phys­i­cally and ver­bally abu­sive to Slater at the begin­ning of the flight.
You can read the full story here and here.

The details are still a lit­tle murky, but it sounds like the pas­sen­ger was out of line, Mr. Slater got fed up, and split. Really it’s a sur­prise to me that this hasn’t hap­pened before. I won­der, to what degree do we hold the air­lines respon­si­ble for this? Granted, two indi­vid­u­als lost their tem­per here but are the air­lines at fault as well, for cre­at­ing a poi­soned atmos­phere around their ser­vice experience?
Amer­i­cans have come to expect the worst out of their air travel expe­ri­ences. Flights are delayed, equip­ment is bro­ken, both dig­nity and lug­gage are lost and hid­den fee’s are incurred at every turn. Yes that’s a bit dra­matic but really peo­ple remem­ber the bad expe­ri­ences, not the good ones.

At the same time, flight atten­dants have been forced to become their employ­ers thugs, keep­ing the angry masses at bay and com­plet­ing what often feels like a bait-and-switch trans­ac­tion between the air­lines and their cus­tomers. The end result is that pas­sen­gers and ser­vice providers could lose it at any moment. Yes­ter­day they did.
So, before Jet Blue turns on its PR team and starts drop­ping boat loads of cash into adver­tis­ing cam­paigns stress­ing just how level headed and calm they are, they might want to make some sub­stan­tive moves towards improv­ing what is cur­rently a bro­ken air travel expe­ri­ence. They could hire some more staff, invest in some con­flict res­o­lu­tion train­ing, or just give every­body a beer and let them exit down the slide. What­ever they set­tle on, they’ll have to do more than try to talk them­selves out of the sit­u­a­tion, or point fin­gers at angry pas­sen­gers and unsta­ble employ­ees. The only real solu­tion is to make air travel sane again.