USA: Stewardesses take self-defense classes to manage unruly passengers

In the midst of the rapid increase in the number of cases of unruly passengers on flights, many, many flight attendants in the US take self-defense courses to successfully manage such cases. Such as reports CNN, the U.S. Transportation Safety Agency plans to train hundreds of flight attendants in the coming weeks as more than 100 incidents were reported last week in the US Civil Aviation Authority (FAA), while this year in total more than 3,600. Stewardesses are taught various techniques for dealing with “difficult” passengers, for example people who do not want to close the table in front of them or do not want to wear their belt.

The instructors teach the flight attendants from defensive postures to blows they can use when a would-be hijacker wants to take control of the plane. Using a doll, an instructor at a seminar in Miami showed them a method they could use as a last resort, targeting the attacker’s eyes. “You may die, but you will have to defend yourself at all costs”, he said characteristically.

The reports made to the FAA show that the flight attendants are facing very difficult situations. In one of these cases, one passenger tried to open the cockpit door, and attacked a man stewardess hitting him in the face. His crew members handcuffed him with plastic handcuffs, but he managed to escape and hit a flight attendant again. In another case, one passenger with one of his fists broke two teeth of a crew member.

THE Sarah Nelson, president of the Stewardess Association said that a small portion of passengers “treat flight attendants as punching bags and do so verbally and physically. “We find that our job is more difficult than ever,” he said if the crew can not quickly relieve such a situation, then the problems can become very big.