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Comment by svnpenn | Hacker News Reader

> The flight attendant lost two teeth in the assault, according to her union, and the passenger, who was identified by the police as Vyvianna Quinonez, 28, has been charged with battery causing serious bodily injury. She has also been barred for life from flying Southwest, the airline said.

What the hell is wrong with people.

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I think 2020 made everyone insane. Political chaos, conspiracy theories, isolation, racial injustice followed by reduced trust in authorities, reduced overall adherence to social norms due to fatigue from the pandemic, etc...

Climate change is a catalyst for conflict.

I don't think climate change has anything to do with a pressurized, climate controlled airliner.

Not immediately but it creates changes in the suitability of systems that were designed for a different arrangement, leading to shifted economic dynamics, leading to people having their lives affected in various ways, leading to some people's lives turning upside down, leading to people in an airplane that are probably more primed to get angry than would be otherwise.

Among a variety of things. Not saying climate change made this person act this way.

EDIT: people seem to dislike this message for some reason. I'd be curious to learn why.

I think your message is fair and reasonable.

No, probably not directly. But could it be a catalyst for conflict?

Absolutely this is a huge decisive factor, almost like the elephant in the room.

I don't necessarily agree that we should use these events as scapegoats. We should truly push for more personal responsibility when it comes to behaving like a civilized member of society.

Too often do we find people breaking the social contract of decency and being good to one and other.

Other media sources report witnesses claim the flight attendant was escalating the situation which hit a breaking point when the flight attendant started touching the passenger. If true, it certainly doesn't justify beating someone and knocking their teeth out, but does add some depth to the situation. Flight attendants have quite a bit of authority and leeway in how to handle situations with passengers but in the current tense environment, unless someone must be physically restrained, touching them is a bad idea.

An airplane is not a democracy and federal laws even specify that passengers are to submit to the authority of airline employees.

Honest question, but if Southwest felt it necessary to ban this customer then why not other airlines? Was this a Southwest targeted attack?

Because it was on a Southwest flight. I don't think media asked KLM or Indigo if they'd like to have an extremist on their flights.

Honestly, if your behavior was bad enough to get you banned from one airline for life, you are a menace and should be banned from all of them. I don’t want to sit down next to someone on a Delta flight who assaulted a flight attendant on Southwest.

Eh, some people are inherently violent. Many more people can be pushed to extremes given extreme circumstances. As long as you don't really know all the details, chances are good that people regret their actions and are going to learn from the event and change.

Barring them from all possible flights for the rest of their life, which may yet last many decades, is likely to do more harm than good because it will cause resentment that can block this improvement in a person. By contrast, barring them from just one airline allows them to continue to live their life while also acting as a permanent reminder to be better.

I would also argue that punishment by an organized monopoly situation (like airlines or tech giants) would create parallel structures to the law and order created by the nation states we created as the society. It would undermine the legal system.

Sorry, but when I’m in an aluminum can 35k feet in the air, I don’t want “inherently violent” people there with me or people with such poor impulse control that they might snap at anything they perceive as extreme.

In that case, you really shouldn't fly in commercial planes to begin with.

In case it isn't obvious: the number of people who can be triggered to be violent in the right circumstances is far higher than the number of people who have been so triggered. It's probably a significantly double-digit percentage of the population.

I'm not sure that's the rational Delta would have. "We'll give you leniency because you punched our competitor's flight attendant."

If we wanted such private bans to be rehabilitative then private companies should not be allowed to impose life-time bans.

Southwest doesn't have that option. They can only ban passengers from their own airline.

If the FBI is involved (interfering with a crew member's duties is a federal crime), they can add her to the no fly list via TSA if warranted. And I think all of these people that act up should be, or in the case of psychiatric reasons, should be required to fly with a caretaker.

I am not sure why my other comment was downvoted to oblivion. ONE airline banning a passenger is NOT the same as being added to the no fly list. Period.

I'm not talking about Southwest banning them from Delta, I'm talking about why say, Delta doesn't decide they do not want known violent passengers?

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Because airlines don't share passenger information like this except through the TSA...

Approximately 30% of the United States now lives in a world with a completely alternate set of facts. They discovered the more they shun any information that is inconvenient to their world truth, the more persecuted by the other 70% they become - which of course only reinforces how right they are.

Thank you for putting this into words.

How is this relevant to the article and/or violence? Are the alternate facts you speak of ones to harm others?

Sorry it’s just that what you’re saying is pretty vague

The implication is this increase in unruliness is caused by a small but vocal percentage of people refusing to wear masks for stupid reasons on airlines with mask requirements. It’s possible this isn’t the cause, and that the flying public is just significantly unruly now for some other reason that I’m not aware of.

I heard the theory that the pandemic broke peoples brains and caused a rise in anti social behavior in multiple contexts but I don’t buy it yet.

The article says 1900 of the 2500 unruliness complaints over the last year at one airline were due to people not wearing masks.

Towards the end of the article they cite masks as one of the contributing factors to the rise in violence. But the airline wants to make it clear that is definitely not the only cause.

It means it's pretty easy to get into a fight when you're surrounded by idiots and ignorance.

The comment I was replying to specifically asked "What the hell is wrong with people."

30% of the US is less than 1% of the population of Earth.

The problems of idiots being violent are unfortunately much more widespread than that.

People are exhausted, emotionally, mentally, physically and it's going to get worse. Whatever is happening was already brewing, the Pandemic just expedited it. In this specific case, you put a bunch of already fragile people through TSA checkpoints, shitty airports, stuffed planes and they just can't take any shit anymore. It's not right what she did but I'm not surprised.

I have no sympathy for this lady (The attacker).

I do believe we are going into a worse place than before Covid.

Things for many Americans weren't so great before Covid, and I feel the misplaced anger when I'm out.

I hope I'm wrong. I'm usually wrong predicting most things.

I liked a few things over quarantine. Violent crime seemed to go down, and people seemed less stressed out in a weird ironic way.

Personally, this opening is not the joyous event I imagined.

Oh yea, the amount of new homeless people in my county is staggering. The authorities seemed a bit understanding for awhile. Now--I see cops harasssing them with vigor. I don't like it at all.

I guess it makes sence. The wealthy got richer over Covid for the most part. The rest of us are confused, disenfranchised, and tired? Like before Covid?

Violent crime wasn’t down, unfortunately, and it is actually going up.

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