I was on a flight recently and couldn’t help but notice the delightful pain of my knees being pressed up against the seat in front of me. The real fun was when the person ahead of me lowered their seat just enough to make it almost easier to drink my coke like it was a trough rather than contort my arms to pick up my drink. You can imagine my interest was piqued as I was reading that American Airlines wants to lower seat pitch even more in their new 737-Max airplanes.
My discomfort got me thinking…which I know can be quite a dangerous thing. There was research done a few years ago that did MRI studies to understand why some people have road rage and why some people don’t. What they discovered was that there is a place in our brain called the Amygdala that gets activated when our personal space boundaries are violated. This is a part of our brain that is largely responsible for our emotional processing, emotional memories, and our anger inhibition. So in this study, they had people hooked up to an MRI and they purposely invaded their personal space. For people with road rage issues, their Amygdala activated 30% more and for 30% longer which easily explained why they get so much more angry and stay angry for significantly longer.
So one has to wonder if the conflict that we are seeing on airplanes in the past few years is directly or at least partially related to the ever decreasing personal space that we have on airplanes. We have more people being crammed into a smaller space at a time in our country when people seem to hate each other and especially the airline staff more than they ever have. What will be interesting is to see if there is a correlation between more in-flight incidents when more of these smaller seating space planes roll off the assembly lines.
So you put people who are already angry at each other in a tight quarters and that is a recipe for what we are seeing on the airplanes. Take Dr. Dao who was the first news story to hit this news cycle He was so angry and fed up that he literally was like an obstinate 2 year-old child going no…I am not going anywhere. He drew a line in the sand and said that you are going to have to force me off this plane. Take this mindset and mix with a flight staff that was going no…we aren’t going to stand for this either and we are drawing a line in the sand and exercise the authority that we have. Look at the video of the mother with the baby carriage and it is the same thing…one person going no I am not going to take it anymore and a flight attendant and passenger doing the same thing. Even in the most recent incidents…it wasn’t the flight attendant but two passengers fighting over a $12 blanket saying the same thing and literally fighting with complete disregard for anybody or anything.
So what can we take from this and what can we do? Well first, airlines need to realize that they are on the front lines for what is going on in this country so they have to take the initiative and do their part to not escalate these situations any further they they have to go. If you watch the videos…multiple times during the videos airline staff could have communicated so much more effectively to de-escalate the situations but instead their tone of voice, aggressive mannerisms, and their own “not going to give in mentality” poured gas on the fire.
On top of that, if the airlines are indeed inadvertently triggering parts of our brain by squeezing more and more people on airplanes to increase their profit, they have a responsibility to do something about it. There have been so many close calls with people trying to open emergency exit doors or fighting with flight staff, how long till someone actually finds a way to open that door mid-flight or hurts a flight attendant. Capitalism is a great thing and companies need to be able to do what they need to do to make a profit, but at what point is enough enough? I for one think there is enough here for the airlines or the FAA to study this…what do you think?
