Not about full-blown air rage, per se, but about inflight drunkenness and flight attendant stupidity:

A few years ago I was flying SEA-EWR on CO, in an aft aisle seat in Y. The 737 was 100% full. In the D-E-F behind me were a trio of young, beefy Jersey boys getting liquored up. Whenever the FA came past they would each buy another two bottles of Skyy and throw cash at her. For some reason the FA found this behavior attractive and kept 'em coming, flirting as she did so. After three hours or so the boys were good and plowed and began swearing loudly, raising their voices to each other, and just generally making life miserable for everyone within five rows.

Finally, after yet another round purchased, I got up and went back to the galley and told the two FAs present, gently, that the three guys were making this the flight from hell, her willingness to supply unlimited booze was the proximate cause, and didn't she think they'd had enough?

The senior one shrugged and said, "Well, if they were in First Class, they'd have had a lot more by now." The younger one, who'd been acting as the booze conduit, said, "Okay, this'll be the last round." But then she A) served them doubles, and B) fingered me to the drunks, informing them that this would be it "because that guy thinks you've had enough."

For the ensuing 90 minutes of the flight I had to listen to the Jersey Boys growl that I was an "a@@hole" and that "we'll get you when we get to Newark" and that "Boy, he looks scared now, don't he"? The back of the plane went very quiet except for them, and the FAs disappeared completely for the duration. If I'd been a short-fuse kind of guy, of course, there would've been a full-scale fistfight, but I just buried my head in a magazine, did not turn around, and took it.

When we got to EWR I went forward quickly, ducked into the forward galley, waited until everyone else had deplaned (the Jersey boys, though unsteady, looking menacing) and told the senior FA and the first officer the whole story. The young FA from aft who'd fueled the whole incident came forward and denied everything backwards and forwards, from overserving to identifying me, though she would not make eye contact the whole time.

Here was a case where an idiot FA directly compromised inflight safety and caused me to fear for my own personal safety. (I deplaned very carefully, but the boys had stumbled on.) As this was not long after a CO employee at EWR had been permanently crippled by an enraged, out-of-control passenger, I was pretty astonished.

I wrote the whole thing up for CO customer service. They responded that union rules prohibited them from telling me what action had been taken, but, trust them, something had happened. And they sent me two positive space coupons.

Bad flight.

[This message has been edited by BearX220 (edited Feb 27, 2004).]