Dealing with flight crew members’ emotional carry-on baggage: another factor contributing to the air rage phenomenon

Denzel Washington eats up the screen in his latest film Flight, as he portrays an achingly flawed, lonely, sadly arrogant, extraordinarily gifted pilot, “Whip” Whitaker, who refuses to admit that he’s lost control of his life. He’s an expert at handling a plane and is desperately in denial about his substance abuse problem. As a lost captain without a ship, he lacks stability as a human being to confront and exorcise his demons. The horrific plane crash was caused by an “inefficient jackscrew on the tail assembly which articulates the horizontal stabilizer”; basically, there was substandard thread life, which incidentally had been suggested as a maintenance replacement 2 years prior. Captain Whitaker, without a doubt, was the mastermind behind saving 96 out of 102 lives by ingeniously inverting the plane as it rapidly pitched into an uncontrolled descent from 7,000 ft; yet he was not innocent of being under the influence while at work. The present report investigates the potential real-life response to such emotional carry-on baggage as addiction to alcohol, sex, drugs, or illegal prescription drugs, examining the results of the responses to a questionnaire administered to airline personnel and non-airline personnel. The questionnaire asked respondents about their overall perception of the movie and requested accounts of any similarities to their own working or traveling experiences. The questionnaire also assessed respondents’ willingness to anonymously share their attitudes toward specific behaviors and decisions made by crewmembers and related airline representatives in the movie Flight, such as substance abuse, lying, and deceptive behavior. Other questions surveyed how an airline employee’s working relationship would be impacted by a fellow employee who exhibits addictive behavior or other types of emotional carry-on baggage. Air travelers were asked to reveal how addictive or other behavior affects their own travel experience and whether they were a loyal customer to a particular airline. This project involved discovering how safe a person really feels when boarding a plane. Are lives blithely placed in the hands of a stranger for whom passengers’ trust in his/her character and ability is automatically assumed or given? Should one question the accuracy of the current standards of medical and pathological testing for fatigue, substance abuse, and pilot professionalism, as well as safety reporting methods? Should the public have a right to know inside information? It is anticipated that the findings from this research will provide the basis for probing the complex issues involved in airline safety and provide a forum to discuss empowering the public to become more aware of the dangers of blind trust in airline personnel and policy.