Is the CEO of Delta Air Lines blaming poor people for all the fights and bad behavior on airplanes?
Enilria points to comments by Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian explaining why passengers have gotten so much more aggressive on planes, and conflict seems to happen so much more.
The fares were so high that the masses couldn’t afford to fly…today…just because we are in a public space we have to remember we are all there together
What Enilria suggests is that Bastian is blaming “the loss of civility on more poor people flying.” But I think it’s far more nuanced than that. And the reason for decline in civility on board depends on the points in time you’re comparing.
- Most people talk about the spike in onboard incidents since before the pandemic. There was a huge increase in 2021 and early 2022. It’s declined since then, but reported incidents are still far about 2019 levels.
- Bastian is comparing air travel today with the era before 1978 deregulation, when airfares (in inflation-adjusted terms) were much higher.
Falling airfares aren’t the explanatory variable between 2025 and 2019. But air travel looks very different today than it did back then. Flying is far more accessible. There are fewer airlines. Planes are full. Service and food are much worse (although it’s easy to look at the past through rose-colored glasses, the old joke about airline food was “it’s awful – and the portions are so small!”).
Just having less space to spread out, because those middle seats are full, makes a huge difference. And we didn’t have TSA security before 9/11. A quarter century ago you walked throug a metal detector, and your bags were scanned, it took a matter of seconds. You didn’t need a ticket to go through, either, so you could meet family and friends at the gate.
But the difference today isn’t primarily that poor people can fly (most airline revenue comes from passengers making over $100,000 a year). It’s:
- There’s a far greater variance in who flies. That’s not just about income. Before deregulation passengers skewed heavily towards business travelers, people whose companies were buying those expensive tickets. Planes weren’t full.
- There are many more people flying today, and they come from all walks of life and all backgrounds. It’s not that ‘rich people are civil and poor people aren’t’ (again, it’s not ‘the poor’ who are largely flying).
When everyone in the sky is part of the ‘laptop class’ they share a set of norms. When there’s far greater diversity in passenger backgrounds, and everyone is thrown together in a packed metal tube, there’s much a much greater chance of misunderstanding.
Everyone brings their baggage with them. They may be having a bad day. There may have been a breakup, a lost job, a lost loved one. Travel is stressful. There’s security, and crowds, and uncertainty in air travel that is tough to handle even before boarding the plane. That stress fuels misunderstandings between people who don’t share common backgrounds. It’s not just ‘the poor people are to blame’, it could just as easily be ‘the rich’ since the issue isn’t level of income but variance in income and other elements of passenger backgrounds. Here’s a rampaging millionaire on an American Airlines flight from this past summer.
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That’s all well and good, but it’s a 50-year trend and the spike in onboard incidents is really a pandemic and post-pandemic era event.
- The pandemic spike was about masks. Those became political, they were required, and they grated on people. Flights diverted over masks. This was less of a problem on United Airlines, because after the David Dao passenger dragging incident United’s flight attendants had been through de-escalation training. They tended to just file reports after the flights rather than confronting passengers. American flight attendants were largely left to enforce the rules with less direction. Everyone used their judgment.After the mask mandate ended, conflict fell but incident reports remained elevated.
- There’s greater passenger dispersion. The number of business travelers has returned to pre-pandemic levels, but each business traveler takes fewer trips. In-office work varies by industry but often isn’t every day, and offices aren’t as full. There’s little need for consultants to fly out to be on client sites each week when the client themselves doesn’t have everyone there. So the out Monday/back Thursday trips just haven’t fully returned, and coordinating trips to see clients is tougher when the client isn’t always there!Peak travel days have smoothed across the week. It used to be Monday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday were peaks. Now travel is more even (though Wednesday is still a lull). And the proportion of leisure travelers has grown. There’s even greater passenger variance than there used to be, with more infrequent flyers.
- Incidents per million passengers is better data. Reports actually remain rare, but the spike becomes even more dramatic when you realize how few people were flying during the actual pandemic. And while reports remain elevated they actually have normalized quite a bit – more than the raw report numbers suggest.
Year FAA unruly passenger reports Passengers Reports per million 2017 544 772 million 0.705 2018 889 814 million 1.092 2019 1161 824 million 1.409 2020 1009 324 million 3.114 2021 5973 585 million 10.205 2022 2455 773 million 3.177 2023 2075 858 million 2.418 2024 2102 904 million 2.325 2025 YTD 1567 882 million 1.776 - The number of reported incidents isn’t the same as the number of incidents. With the huge spike in incidents during the pandemic came stricter enforcement and a more rigorous reporting regime. Before the pandemic incidents might have gone unreported. Now, reports are filed more often. So part of what we’re seeing is greater reports, rather than a greater number of incidents.
The Transportation Secretary is waging a campaign – “Golden Age of Travel Starts with You” – suggesting you don’t wear pajamas to the airport but customer attire isn’t the driver of conflict.
Airline passengers aren’t the homogenous group they once were. Planes are full when they didn’t used to be. And the entire travel experience has become more stressful. At the same time, the composition of travelers has continued to change – but things aren’t nearly as bad as raw incident numbers would suggest. More people are flying – and we’re collecting a lot more incidents that were likely already happening in the data.
Frankly he is right. Outside of premium cabins on international flights most airlines, especially in the US, have become buses that fly. Even first class has become a place I don’t recognize any more after 40 years and almost 8 million miles. Very sad. I guess private is the only way to avoid it
IMO, courtesy and patience go a long way. The flying experience is very stressful to some folks and their behavior is not acceptable, but treating each other like a fellow human can help.
Maybe Gary or other travel expert can explain, but I have never understood why they don’t fill the plane from the back to the front (after first and business class).
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
He does have a point. Just remember that ‘masses’ come in all shapes and sizes.
He is right. Flying used to be a joy even when seated in coach. Because fares are so cheap airlines need to put in more seats and pack their planes to the gills. But alas we live in a society in which people expect and demand Frontier Airline fares but PanAm Clipper service.
Know what else was better? The service.
IMO the primary reason airlines dont fill planes back to front is because of…bag fees.
Those sitting in the back are more likely to bring extra/oversized stuff on a flight in the hopes of avoiding a checked bag fee. If they are boarded before higher paying, more frequent flying customers then the customers whose bags have to be checked are those who are more likely to have a free checked bag benefit.
Additionally, you dont want to piss off/inconvenience those who are more likely to have a free checked bag benefit as they are most likely higher LTV customers than those sitting in the back of the plane.
The business travelers and the so-called “laptop class” moved to teleconferencing (often with those sessions recorded for follow-up review by legal).
In 2025, the only people insisting on in-person interaction are those trying to avoid call logs and other audit trails.
Agree with everything posted here so far, so I guess it’s unanimous! Not only was the service better, the whole experience was less stressful. Long lines, TSA, crowded airports, cramped seats and heavy traffic just getting to the airport. Not sure that it is the less economically successful folks causing the most trouble, there certainly is a rich entitled jerk aspect to it also.
Bottom line is confrontation and narcissism.is the cause, civility and kindness is the cure.
What a shock, coming from such an asshat.
There’s a correlation between frequent flyer program enhancements and bad behavior. At one time, triple miles, award charts,etc.
We eat fewer enhancements, ha ha