Flight attendants train in self-defense amid spike in unruly passengers

Miami (CNN) – “Help!” A stewardess yelled as she grabbed a knife-wielding man and struggled to drive the knife into his hip. “I need help!”

Then the fighting stopped. “Alright, let’s do it again,” said the instructor. “Restart!”

The knife was made of rubber. The man was a flying companion. They did not fight a life-and-death fight inside the cockpit of a crowded plane, but instead practiced in a padded gym with their federal air officer instructors.

The eight flight attendants in this class in the Miami area were among the hundreds that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) plans to train this summer and fall in self-defense skills. It is restarting the half-day course first developed in 2004 that was recently discontinued due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Techniques include how to hit, stomp and subdue a violent attacker – a scenario these flight attendants said they hope they will never encounter.

Amid the return of air travel this year, the number of unruly and violent passengers is increasing. More than 100 incidents were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the past week, for a total of more than 3,600 so far this year.

Flight attendants are taught a set of de-escalation techniques to handle difficult passengers: those who don’t put away the table or those who insist that an oversized suitcase fit in the container the last time.

But they say the defiance and violence that accompany this return to travel is putting those skills to the test.

“You get on a plane full of people and some of them are not very happy and you never know what is going to happen,” said Carrie, a flight attendant who took the class when she returned to work after a pandemic-related leave of absence. .

“It is more imperative that we take care of ourselves and our passengers because people are anxious, upset and frustrated, and sometimes that comes out in an inappropriate way,” he said. (Carrie asked CNN not to publish her last name because her airline did not authorize her to speak publicly.)

Learning last resort tactics

The instructors teach them a variety of techniques, from a defensive stance to punches that can be given to a potential hijacker desperate to take command of the plane.

An instructor used a mannequin to demonstrate a last resort method of attacking an attacker’s eyes.

“You are possibly going to die. You have to defend yourself at all costs,” he said. (CNN agreed not to identify the instructors because they are active duty federal air officers whose work on airplanes is done undercover.)

Most encounters will never reach that level. But the Federal Aviation Administration summaries of more than 40 onboard incidents in recent months show the blatant opposition flight attendants have had to face.

In one case, the FAA said that a passenger “tried to open the cabin door, repeatedly refused to comply with instructions from crew members, and physically assaulted a flight attendant by hitting him in the face and pushing him into the air. I usually”. After crew members restrained the passenger with plastic handcuffs, he “broke free from one of the handcuffs and hit the flight attendant in the face a second time.” The passenger was not named in the report.

In another case, the union representing Southwest Airlines flight attendants said the blow from a passenger knocked out two teeth of a flight attendant.

About three-quarters of the reported incidents involve passengers repeatedly violating or defying the federal requirement to wear a face mask when on board an airplane. Another common theme is alcohol, so much so that many airlines have withheld alcohol service on flights.

‘I don’t want to wear any of this’

Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said a small group of passengers are “treating flight attendants like punching bags, and they are doing it verbally and physically.”

“We are finding that our jobs are more difficult than ever,” Nelson said. “The conflict is escalating very quickly. When we cannot get there and blur it because we are doing so many things … the problems can become big very quickly.”

In training, Donna O’Neil was practicing an elbow strike that she could use if a violent passenger attacks her in the hallway or in the kitchen from behind. She has 47 years of experience and said she is “pretty good at calming things down.”

“I don’t want to wear any of this,” O’Neil said after training. “But if I had to, I would certainly feel a lot more confident.”

An air officers supervisor, Noel Curtin, came in to watch some of the training and said he hopes the crew members leave with that kind of confidence.

“We are not ubiquitous, so it is important that crew members are able to deal with individual incidents on the aircraft,” Curtin said later in his office.

“There are no reinforcements at 10,000 meters high.”