US: Mask fights and a ‘mob mentality’: What flight attendants faced over the last year

One flight attendant needed medical attention for a crippling migraine brought on by confronting a passenger who refused to wear a mask. The day after the siege on Capitol Hill, passengers on a shuttle bus with a Black flight attendant assailed her with racial slurs, according to a union for flight attendants. Aviation safety officials have received dozens of confidential complaints in the past year from attendants trying to enforce mask safety rules. The reports, filed in the Aviation Safety Reporting System database, at times describe a chaotic, unhinged workplace where passengers regularly abuse airline employees.The coronavirus pandemic and political divisions of the past year have caused fear, economic pain, and social and family rifts around the country, but for airline workers, and flight attendants in particular, the unease and tension have often converged in a tiny cabin space. The tension is at a level flight attendants have not seen before, said Paul Hartshorn Jr, a veteran attendant and a spokesman for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants union. “I think we’re pretty well trained on how to handle a disruptive passenger,” said Hartshorn, 46. “What we’re not trained to do and what we shouldn’t be dealing with is large groups of passengers inciting a riot with another group of passengers.”<br/>