With the amount of global air traffic increasing drastically in recent years, incidents involving unruly passengers have also gone up. High-profile air rage episodes have been making headlines more frequently with the infamous "nut rage" incident from December 2014 one of the cases that immediately springs to mind. That took place at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and saw Korean Air vice president Heather Cho order one of her own company's aircraft to return to the gate before takeoff because she was dissatisfied with the way a flight attendant served her nuts. When it became public, Cho resigned from one of her executive positions at Korean Air and served three months out of a twelve month prison sentence.
According to data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), there were 9,315 incidents involving unruly passengers worldwide in 2014 and that went up 14 percent in 2015 to 10,854. The trend stabilized in 2016, however, and actually fell slightly to 9,837 incidents, equating to 1 per 1,434 flights. How does air rage in the U.S. compare with the global trend? The Federal Aviation Administration records enforcement actions against unruly passengers and in 2004, there were 310 such actions. Prosecutions have been in descent in the years since with only 99 instances in 2016.
Even though air rage incidents are falling in the U.S., modern aircraft design is being linked to the phenomenon with the class difference in particular agitating passengers. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States found that the presence of a first class section makes the chances of an air rage incident occurring in economy 3.84 times more likely. It also found that the chances of an air rage incident increase in both sections when economy travelers pass through first class after entering through the front of the plane. When it comes to boarding from the middle, economy passengers are 2.18 times more likely to become unruly while first-class passengers are 11.86 times more likely. Anger over the class divide tends to manifest itself in boarding patterns, leg room, flight length and the number of total passengers. The difference in quality between first-class and economy-class meals is also likely to contribute to air rage, as can of course be seen by Heather Cho's reaction after being served nuts in a bag rather than a bowl.
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