‘Having a disability is not an excuse to mistreat other people’: Flight attendants earn universal praise after graceful handling of rude Karen

In another edition of what seems to be an endless parade of TikToks exposing bad airplane etiquette, a woman is once again seen berating a flight attendant before take-off.

In this particular video, a woman on a Southwest flight is demanding that the flight attendant meets all of her needs — including, but not limited to: moving her son’s seat away from her husband’s and next to hers, putting her bag away, and buckling her seat belt.

The woman continues to pile request after request onto the flight attendant as she patiently explains that her husband and son are seated together and she’s happy to help her but cannot have this chaos or disruption in the air. This doesn’t seem to be enough for the passenger, as she tried to flag down another flight attendant instead, saying she wasn’t being disruptive, she’s just hard of hearing.

She does, however, seem to be at least slightly self-aware of the chaos she is causing and says that somebody “is using God’s name in vain” behind her, so she’ll be quiet and just sit there. The flight attendant finally walks away, but not before buckling the woman in, putting her bag away, picking up her phone, and moving her crutches.

The whole ordeal led nearly 2 million viewers, including the user that posted the video, to recognize the patience of not only this particular flight attendant but flight attendants everywhere. Many commenters voiced a newfound respect for flight attendants, especially after what seems like an uptick in situations like this one.

In fact, according to the International Air Transport Association, passenger incidents like this one have gone up in the past few years, with unruly behavior reported every 568 flights in 2022. The IATA shared that non-compliance, verbal abuse, and intoxication all increased drastically in 2021. Even physical abuse, though still rare, climbed 61%.

“Watching these videos, I’ve truly looked and have a whole new respect for flight attendants! They deal with A LOT with no room to escape,” said one commenter, an observation which is evident through the IATA’s statistics and videos like this one.

Other commenters were happy to share how gracious flight attendants had been with them in the past, one viewer even shared that a flight attendant had helped them through a panic attack. Commenters were in agreement that many flight attendants had been nothing but heroes to them, proving that plane passenger Karens are the real problem.