I have to throw some of the responsibility for passengers' bad behavior back on the airlines, too. Remember the experiments you read about in Psych 101 where they put a lot of rats in a small space and they started biting each other and getting into fights? What do you think would happen if they strapped them into tiny, cramped seats in a little Rat Plane, restricted their ability to take bathroom breaks by making the aisle too small to hold anything but a beverage cart (and making rats in the window seat have to ask their seatmates to move so they could get out), didn't feed them, limited the circulation of fresh air, and kept them on the tarmac for an hour or two? They would not be happy, well-behaved rats.

This was really driven home to me once as I watched people on an Amtrak train. The children were positively serene. They could get out, stand in the aisles, even take short walks. Anyone who wanted to get up to stretch their legs or use the bathroom could do it- easily. Food was available in the dining car. You could enjoy it and use your laptop at the same time without endangering your laptop.

Of course the rats- uh, I mean the passengers- are responsible for keeping their behavior under control and being polite and civilized. But the current conditions in Coach make it very difficult.