Flight attendants threaten passengers with criminal charges more often

Being a flight attendant may be a job that is getting harder, like Jeffery posted. After reading this article originally published in the St. Petersburg Times about flight attendant passenger altercations, it reminds me of what it is like in an unruly classroom of adolescent middle-schoolers. Instead of threatening people with a trip to the principal's office for not staying in their seats, for example, the threat is criminal charges, usually made in a loud voice.

An aviation lawyer in Sarasota, Florida said that flight attendants are using the threat of criminal charges for passengers who are not behaving more often ever since 9/11. I wonder how much the threats are working? The article mentioned several of the altercations we've covered on Gadling.

• JetBlue crew has woman arrested over video of fighting passengers
• Southwest Airline makes woman wearing mini-skirt cover up
• Southwest airlines orders man to cover up offensive T-shirt
• Another unruly family kicked off flight

With the news of poor behavior it makes me wonder, if there wasn't the threat of criminal charges, would people act worse? Or, since threats with middle-schoolers often don't work well, I wonder if threats by flight attendants like, "If you don't stop that right now, you'll be in serious trouble," make people behave worse?

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