Air travel can often bring the worse out in people. The added stress about missing flights, travelling with family or friends, worrying about connections and about 1000 other things can really make people change their overall behaviour and oftentimes, it’s far from fantastic.

I can confidently say in my travels, I have seen a fair share of incidents involving passengers acting or being angry not only towards staff from the airline itself but also ground personal or even in some cases other passengers. In saying this, most of the anger I have witnessed has been on the ground but there have been a few circumstances I’ve seen things in the air that have really shaken my head.

Air rage is sadly becoming more and more prevalent in the travel space and that comes down to a huge variety of factors. With the ever-increasing presence of social media, these types of incidents are bound to make news within a very short space of time and things go viral soo quickly, it’s sometimes hard keeping up with stories.

20-year-old Demi Burton was travelling from Abu Dhabi to Manchester and was intoxicated causing chaos on a 7-hour flight. Here are all the details:

• A 20-year-old United Kingdom resident was returning home from visiting time in Australia on a holiday
• She was already intoxicated before she had even boarded the Etihad flight
• She started to become agitated and aggressive when crew members wouldn’t continue serving her red wine 
• She began making derogatory and sexual orientated comments to male passengers
• She was trying to orchestrate men to join the mile-high-club
• She ended up being restrained by 6 people including crew
• She head-but a medic onboard as well as bit cabin crew
• When the aircraft landed in Manchester, she was immediately arrested and escorted off the aircraft
• She has been sentenced to 6 months imprisonment

Abu Dhabi Airport

Above is pretty much how the whole incident seemed to playout and there are a few little interesting points that I’d love to touch on and talk about:

• How was the passenger getting intoxicated before her flight?

There seems to be a little inconsistency with this aspect of the story and it’s one part I’m trying to find out more information for. The drinking age in the UAE is 21 and they are pretty strict in most cases, In my experience anyway. If she’s only 20, where was she getting access to alcohol without having to display ID? I would understand if she had lounge access or was even travelling in a premium cabin but it doesn’t appear to be the case.

I’d also like to know was she connecting straight from that Australia flight because that could also be a plausible reason why she was already intoxicated.

• 6 months, are you serious?

This is the one part of the story that really angers me and I find to be a little soft. Not only was this women causing an absolute scene onboard but she actually got 5 assault charges out of the whole ordeal. I’m sorry but if you’re going to cause a potential threat to crew and passengers without any regard, you deserve A LOT longer being behind bars and being banned from air travel indefinitely.

Again, this is another prime example of why select people and alcohol never should be put together in the air. Ms Burton’s response to this was due to having an extreme phobia of flying but that is in no way a valid response for her actions, 20 million other people have the same phobia and don’t create problems midair.

What a classy young lady….