Air rage triggered by walking past first-class seating, study says

A new study suggests an unexpected trigger for these rare cases of air rage. It found that passengers in economy seating were 3.84 times more likely to have an incident of air rage if they were on a plane that had a first-class section. They were 2.18 times more likely to have an outburst if they had to walk through first class to board the plane, as opposed to boarding in the middle of the plane, directly into the economy section. "Psychology (research) tells us that when people feel a sense of deprivation and inequality, they are more likely to act out," said Katherine A. DeCelles, associate professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto. DeCelles is the lead author of the study, which was published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Passengers are probably not even consciously aware of the deprivation and inequality, and how much it is stressing them out, DeCelles said. However, she and her colleague were not able to talk with the enraged passengers to get a better idea what set them off. There was also a nearly 12-fold increase in the rate of air rage among first-class passengers on flights where all passengers boarded through the first-class section, compared with flights that had separate entrances for first class and economy.<br/>