Can’t we all disagree in a civil manner? That would seem to be the best policy on an airplane. Trapped in a pressurized can with total strangers is, after all, a miserable experience even before Facebook arguments make the leap to real life. But, lately, it seems impossible to avoid. First, a Trump supporter went viral and was ultimately banned from Delta for life, and now a woman has been booted off a flight for flipping out at a Trump supporter.
A question nobody seems to be asking, though, is why the airlines’ employees should be stuck with all this? On some level, it’s understandable as politics has seeped not just into our lives, but into our wallets. As we’ve become aware that the companies we shop from are every bit as political as we are, we’ve increasingly been concerned with how they spend their money which, after all, used to be our money. With politics growing increasingly divided, people, quite fairly, are more and more uncomfortable with their dollars going, even indirectly, to causes they don’t support.
So even the hint of a company taking a side in politics, whether via action or inaction, raises eyebrows, especially since the idea of hushing up a loudmouth on a flight has become a pipe dream: Both of the examples we mentioned above hit social media and blew up immediately.
Perfectly pleasant people who shouldn’t have to deal with our political rants mid-air.
The flip side of that, however, is that flight attendants and pilots didn’t sign on for any politics, from their bosses or their passengers. Air travel is complex, difficult, and often unpleasant work even when everything goes smoothly. A flight attendant’s literal job is to be a nomadic safety professional — keeping passengers sober, relatively civil, and out of each other’s hair on planes with shrinking seat space, and then dealing with the disgusting aftermath.
So how do we keep air travel civil? Well, really it starts with the golden rule of human conversation: A closed mouth attracts no feet. In many of these incidents, it’s not really clear how, precisely, such a divisive topic came up, but we’re going to guess it was on somebody’s mind. Failing that, the best thing to do is to be the adult: Point out you’ve got a bit of a task ahead, that you appreciate their view but politely have to pass on the argument, and ask them to simply let the matter rest. And if they can’t, ping the attendant and ask if there’s another seat you can move to.
And, above all, make a promise to yourself you won’t pick a fight with a stranger in public where it promises to make everyone miserable. There does have to come a point, for our collective sanity, where politics recedes into the background. It can never leave our minds completely, of course. But, when we get on an airplane, we should acknowledge that we need to let some things rest, at least until we hit the baggage claim.
