Air rage occurs when airline personnel or passengers act violently or disruptively towards others. When these incidents have occurred in flight, they have often required the pilots to divert and make an emergency landing in order to remove the individual(s), as the safety of those on board cannot be guaranteed otherwise. On the ground they have led to delayed departures. In the case of unruly passengers, the incidents have resulted in criminal charges; unruly crew often face disciplinary action including termination and, in some cases, charges as well. +ContentsPre-1990s1940s1950s1960s1990s1994199519961997199819992000s20002001200220032004200520062007200820092010s20102011201220132014201520162017201820192020s2020202120222023202420252026
Pre-1990s
1940s The first documented case of air rage was recorded in 1947 on a flight from Havana to Miami, when a drunk man assaulted another passenger and a flight attendant.
1950s Another early documented case involved a flight in Alaska in 1950, when a man with a known criminal record attacked a flight attendant on a Douglas DC-3 plane. A co-pilot and two other passengers restrained the man with a cargo tiedown.
1960s On December 23, 1964, 22-year-old musician Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was to accompany his bandmates on a two-week U.S. concert tour, but while on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston, suffered his first nervous breakdown. Five minutes after the plane had taken off, Wilson placed a pillow over his face and began crying and shouting. He recalled, "I told the stewardess, 'I don't want any food. Get away from me.' Then I started telling people that I'm not getting off the plane. I was getting far out, coming undone, having a breakdown, and I just let myself go completely." The plane completed its flight successfully, although Wilson ultimately declared to his bandmates that he would withdraw from all future concert tours. Loren Schwartz, a former acquaintance of Wilson's, later suggested that Wilson had feigned mental illness during the flight as part of a calculated "ploy to get off the road". Entertainment Weekly ranked the incident number 33 on a list of the "100 Greatest Moments in Rock".
1990s
1994
Northwest Airlines Flight 206: On an October 22, 1994 flight from Detroit to Washington, radio talk show host Julianne Malveaux, 41, swore at a child who accidentally bumped her while she was asleep in her seat, then at a flight attendant who accidentally sprayed her with a can of soda when it opened. When another flight attendant asked her to put away her laptop before the plane landed, she grabbed the woman's arm. As a result of this she was arrested on landing and charged with assault; she was sentenced to probation.
1995
United Airlines Flight 976: Angry after flight attendants refused to serve him more alcohol due to his visible intoxicated state, Gerard Finneran, a 59-year-old Wall Street investment banker, flying from Buenos Aires to New York on October 20, got out of his seat and harassed and assaulted the flight attendants in response before he defecated on a service cart in the first-class section in full view of other passengers and began running around the cabin, leaving feces in his footprints and smearing some of it on the walls. Further food service was canceled due to the unsanitary conditions created. The pilot asked to make an emergency landing at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan to have the man removed from the plane and taken into custody, but other passengers, including Argentine foreign minister Guido di Tella and Portuguese president Mário Soares, and air controllers, would not allow the diversion due to the security risks involved with foreign dignitaries on board. When the plane landed, the man was arrested by the FBI on several charges of interfering with a flight crew. Finneran eventually pled guilty to one count of making a threat, was fined $5,000 and sentenced to 300 hours of community service. He also agreed to reimburse United $1,000 for its costs involved in cleaning the aircraft's interior, and his fellow passengers $48,000 for their tickets. This incident has been recalled as one of the worst cases of air rage. On a November flight from Frankfurt to Washington Dulles International Airport, a 36-year-old passenger threatened a flight attendant whom he accused of repeatedly bumping him with the drinks cart. After the attendant had apologized and moved away, the passenger attacked the attendant, as well as another attendant who tried to intervene, until passengers could restrain him. He was arrested on landing, and shortly afterward pleaded guilty to interfering with a flight crew, receiving six months' unsupervised probation as his sentence. The passenger's lawyer attributed his client's behavior to sleep deprivation and stress over having to fly back to the U.S. for his father's funeral. After an attendant on a November 22 United flight from London to Dulles caught a Gloucester man smoking in the lavatory, he slammed the door on the female attendant's foot and assaulted other crew who came to assist. He was arrested on arrival by the FBI and charged with three counts of interfering with a flight crew; investigators soon learned that he had a lengthy criminal record in the United Kingdom. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to 30 months, one of the first instances of air rage to result in prison time. On December 18, a group of 18 British and Irish tourists who became drunk and rowdy and had a food fight on a Northwest flight from London to Minneapolis were restrained by members of the U.S. freestyle wrestling team who were also aboard. Some members of the group supposedly dispatched their children to steal liquor from the drinks carts after the crew had cut them off. A 25-year-old member of the group assaulted a flight attendant who had tried to restrain him. He was arrested on landing, pled guilty to the charge, and was sentenced to a month in jail, most of which he had already served.
1996
A Saudi princess, Salwa al-Qahtani, a wife of Prince Abdullah bin Faisal, son of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, was arrested after a January 20, 1996, TWA flight from Paris to Boston. A dispute between her and a flight attendant that began when the attendant told her to return to her seat during takeoff escalated into violence after the princess, who was intoxicated, became angry that she was not being served drinks fast enough. The airline was cited by the FAA for serving alcohol to an already intoxicated passenger. She reached a plea agreement where she did not admit guilt but instead was fined $500 and placed on six months unsupervised probation, a punishment that the union representing the flight attendant considered far too lenient. USAir Flight 292: A 40-year-old man from Pooler, Georgia, was apparently intoxicated when he boarded the Boeing 737 flying from Savannah to Charlotte on July 6, 1996. He had told the gate agents he did not want any more to drink, but then once on board asked for mixed drinks, which the flight attendants denied. After takeoff, he overpowered the lead attendant and banged her head against the wall, then assaulted other crew and passengers who had attempted to rescue her. The captain returned to Savannah, where the man was arrested. Later that year he pleaded guilty to interfering with a flight crew. He was sentenced to four years and three months in prison followed by 200 hours of community service, and was required to submit to regular drug and alcohol testing and reimburse USAir for the cost of turning the plane around.
1997 After Cambodian businessman Teng Bunma, 55, deplaned from a Royal Air Cambodge flight from Hong Kong to Phnom Penh on April 8, 1997, an airline representative informed him that his luggage would be unloaded only after he paid an additional $600 fee. In response, he borrowed a handgun from one of his bodyguards and shot out one of the tires of the 737 he had arrived on, costing the airline $3,000 in repair costs. He said later that he would have shot them all out but there were too many passengers standing around. He also further explained his grievances against the airline: The pilot had been rude to him when he boarded, he claimed, the plane arrived late, his luggage was lost and the airline offered only a fraction of its value as reimbursement. It took two days to replace the tire. Continental Airlines Flight 1837: An hour before a flight from Houston landed at Los Angeles International Airport on June 14, 1997, two passengers, a man and a woman, told the crew that there were people with bombs and guns at the rear of the plane and that they were going to open the cabin doors. The male passenger grabbed hot coffee and poured it over the flight attendant, resulting in severe burns. The female passenger kicked a hole through the cockpit door while attempting to enter it. After the plane landed, they were arrested. The male passenger got a three-year prison sentence while the female passenger received two. US Airways Flight 38: Shortly before a plane from Los Angeles began its approach to Baltimore/Washington International Airport on December 16, 1997, one passenger, a 21-year-old Santa Monica College football player, began walking up and down the aisles telling fellow passengers he was filled with the spirit of Jesus and blessing them with a pillow. After being persuaded to sit down, he got up again and attempted to enter the cockpit. This time he resisted violently when efforts were made to return him to his seat. One attendant was injured severely enough to require three surgeries yet passengers and crew were able to subdue him for the remainder of the flight. After being arrested on landing, the passenger claimed that he was on LSD at the time. After being convicted of assault and reckless endangerment of an aircraft, he was sentenced to 3 years' probation and 150 hours of community service, fined $1,500, ordered to see a psychiatrist, and required—for three years—to obtain written permission from any airline before flying on it.
1998
British Airways Flight 1611: Stone Roses lead singer Ian Brown was sentenced to four months in prison after he threatened to chop a flight attendant's hands off and attempted to break into the cockpit as the flight from Paris was descending to Manchester Airport on February 13. An April British Airways flight from Gatwick to Orlando diverted to Boston where Massachusetts State Police troopers took a 33-year-old man from Nottingham off the plane and arrested him after he had attempted to kiss a flight attendant, damaged food service equipment and threatened crew before being restrained. He pleaded guilty to malicious destruction of property, interfering with the operation of an aircraft and indecent assault and battery, drawing a $10,000 fine. After boarding a July 9 Spirit Airlines flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Atlantic City, New Jersey, a 37-year-old female passenger sprayed perfume on the seats around her to cover a foul odor that she said she had smelled and verbally abused a flight attendant who had asked her to stop. After takeoff, she screamed at a group of three children traveling alone to stop moving in their seats, then fell asleep. When one of the children reclined his seat, she awoke, swore at the child, and then kicked the seat down so hard that it collapsed on the boy, causing head injuries. She was arrested and charged with assault. At trial, she claimed diminished capacity as a defense, citing a diagnosis of bipolar disorder subsequent to the incident; she was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to 3 months' house arrest, 200 hours of community service with the provision that it not be done around children, and fines and restitution payments totalling $16,000. Spirit banned her from further flights; the children's parents also sued her.