A Southwest passenger was filmed punching a flight attendant. She was charged with two felonies.

[Vogon_Glory]

4. You're probably right

I believe that Trumpism green-lighted a lot of this behavior, but it was already there and lurking just below the surface.

Perhaps (or perhaps not) because I come from an earlier generation, I grew up with the idea that commercial airliners could be dangerous places. You could kill or injure yourself or others if you were rolling around loose in the cabin and if you needed to get out of the cabin in case of a hard landing, you made sure you were ready to do so. You buckled up and you did what the aircrew told you.

You didn’t have to like it, you were free to grumble sotto-voce that it was chicken (scratch), but you did it anyway.

A lot of today’s air travelers act like they were riding a bus. Alas, unlike bus drivers, and unlike railroad conductors in days of yore, captains and crew don’t have the option of kicking these people’s sorry backsides off at the side of the road or some lonely bit of railroad track out in the middle of nowhere.