Abusive behaviour

SIX months in jail for an international lawyer. Even as he sentenced her, a judge in London said: ‘You are a woman, not just of good character but a positive and impeccable character — a righter of wrongs....You are a person who has done good work throughout your life.’ The mind boggles at the tirade — filmed and put online by the ubiquitous mobile phone-wielding public. The woman, travelling on an Air India flight, went on a racist rant and was ‘drunk and obnoxious almost from the beginning to the end’. 

What happened in this case is, unfortunately, too familiar as an increasing number of people travel by air. While a vast majority of flights are uneventful, there is something particularly scary about being trapped in a slim metal tube high above the earth with someone who leaves behind norms of civil, and sometimes, even civilised behaviour. An International Air Transport Association report a few years ago said that on an average, some airline, somewhere in the world deals with an unruly passenger 70 times a day. It comes as no surprise that intoxication is a significant factor in most such incidents. 

Naturally, anxiety, slipping free of societal norms, simple opportunistic crimes, and sometimes psychological problems, all can contribute to bad behaviour, but even as airlines are less and less tolerant to such aberrations, the steep rise in the number of passengers who travel by air makes more of a challenge for the aircrew. True, they represent a tiny fraction of the total, but bad passengers can be disruptive. The knowledge that they would be punished for such behaviour would help to make them behave better. The strict stance of the London judge against a member of the Bar who had earlier made a name for herself for all the right reasons would serve as a deterrent. Six months in jail, a career destroyed and social media hounding — the price paid by the 50-year-old woman was rather high.