Author: Jane L. Levere
Source: New York Times

Flying in a Snit

There would be a brief delay in the flight to Denver until an oxygen tank arrived for one of the passengers, the Ted airline agent announced at the departure gate at the Phoenix airport. John Paasonen, then a consultant to philanthropists, could hardly believe what happened next.

Another traveler began "screaming he would miss his connection, and asking why this lady was so important," Mr. Paasonen, now a student at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, said of the incident last May. "It was just surprising to see a customer treat another human being like that."

As it turned out, the flight arrived in Denver five minutes early, making up lost time because of tailwinds.

The spread of high-tech gadgets, especially cellphones, into every corner of the business-travel world has only made matters worse.

Get ready for more outbursts like that - and for plenty of other rude behavior that takes place at lower decibel levels. Etiquette in the air took a turn for the worse after 9/11, as travelers' frustrations over long lines and intrusive security checks boiled over, and it sank even more last year as planes grew as crowded as cattle cars.

Frequent travelers do not have high hopes for relief this year, either. "Before Sept. 11, air travel was a reasonably good experience," said Robert W. Coggin, vice chairman of Cendant Travel Distribution Services in Parsippany, N.J., and a former executive vice president for marketing at Delta Air Lines. "Five years ago, load factors in the '60's were good, but today they're in the '80's," he said, referring to the percentage of seats occupied by paying customers.

"Between the combination of sheer volumes and the security stuff, by the time you get to the plane, you're feeling stress. Everyone's kind of on edge."

The spread of high-tech gadgets, especially cellphones, into every corner of the business-travel world has only made matters worse. Hard stares or pleas for silence rarely work, so Jonathan Yarmis, a senior vice president of Hill & Knowlton in New York, opted for the next-best course: sweet revenge.

On a trip to Seattle last year, Mr. Yarmis and others at the United Red Carpet Club at LaGuardia Airport were forced to listen to a young man en route to Nashville who was "on his phone talking to everyone he knew," he recalled. "It sounded like he was on his first business trip. I and others asked him to tone it down or move elsewhere, but he didn't acknowledge us."

Noting the man's phone number-which he repeated on voice messages he left-Mr. Yarmis called him from Seattle at midnight, or 2 a.m. Nashville time.

"I said, 'You must think it's pretty rude getting a phone call at 2 a.m.' " Mr. Yarmis said. "He said, 'Yeah.' I said. 'It's certainly less rude than the behavior you exhibited in the Red Carpet Club this afternoon.' We both hung up. Maybe I made a point to him."

The cellphone crowd can definitely touch some raw nerves, and then there are the BlackBerry addicts. Bill Lareau, an Indianapolis-based consultant and author, attributes the epidemic of bad manners to more than just the stresses of the road. He thinks the inexperience of young executives "who don't know how to behave when they travel and are not used to it" plays a big role, too.

"When I started out in business, you couldn't be a hot-shot manager at 25 and travel," Mr. Lareau said. "Now people routinely travel who are in the depths of their organization. They tend to be louder; they think they're special; their expectations are totally unfounded."

How else to explain the callousness that Joan Logue-Kinder, director of communications and government affairs for the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation in Jamaica, Queens, observed recently on an Amtrak ride from Washington to New York. As a short, elderly woman struggled to put her suitcase into the overhead compartment, four strapping male passengers gazed indifferently at the scene, prompting Ms. Logue-Kinder herself to come to the rescue.

Then the woman realized she had forgotten to remove something from the bag; she climbed up onto the seat over the men to retrieve it, apologizing to them for bothering them.

"They looked at her like she was some kind of nut," Ms. Logue-Kinder said. "They didn't budge or offer to help - these guys were at least six feet tall. This has nothing to do with chivalry. It's a matter of courtesy, assisting another human being."

It's not just business travelers who can be unpleasant. Service providers have also been known to snap at their customers, even if under their breath. Jean Frolet, an Atlanta management consultant and longtime platinum participant in one airline's frequent-flier program, says he is deliberately scaling back on that carrier's flights and switching to a newer competitor whenever he can.

"Everybody's being treated to the lowest common denominator," he said. "They've got such a huge volume of transactions to handle, even if you're a platinum or gold passenger, you don't get different kind of handling." He recalls a recent telephone conversation with a reservations agent who, annoyed by his long silence after she told him the price of a ticket, muttered in a foreign language, "What's this idiot up to?"

"I didn't say anything to her," Mr. Frolet said.

What's the proper response to other people's discourtesy? Judith Martin, author of "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior," suggests firmly and politely sticking up for your rights. For example, if someone in the seat in front of you on a flight reclines the seat into your face, Mrs. Martin recommends saying, "'I'm so sorry, this is pressing back on me, could you move it forward a little?' "

"Most people will," she said. "When you challenge people, when you call them rude and you start being rude to them, they will fight back."

William A. Allen III, a management consultant in Raleigh, N.C., tried sweet reasoning but it didn't work for him, so he adopted a more sure-fire method: disposable ear plugs.

"I put them in everywhere I go, to block out the endless P.S.A.'s in airports, CNN that's too loud," and people yapping into cellphones, Mr. Allen said. "I used to be a lot more vocal, but now I'm tired of trying."