Air rage'' is a media term for what the airlines call 'unruly passengers.' And recirculated cabin air is what's causing air rage. I base this statement on my own experiences in the airplane when the airlines started making oxygen a budget-cutting ploy in 1978. Ten years prior to that I had a pulmonary embolism and, with the damaged lung, it was more difficult for me to achieve oxygenation. I became very aware that when there was less oxygen in the cabin, I did not feel happy or as energetic as when there was more oxygen-rich cabin air as there had been before 1978. Another touchstone for me was that every time I entered the cockpit in flight, there was plenty of oxygen and I felt much better than I did in the cabin.

Subsequently, over the next nine years that I continued to work as an international flight attendant/in-flight purser, I noticed that many passengers were having temper tantrums on board and I surmised that the source of this problem was the very minimal oxygen in the cabin air.

In 1998, eleven years after I stopped working as a flight attendant, I wrote my oxygen-deprivation theory vis a vis air rage as a stringer for Reuters News Service; as such, it was picked up and published by many media around the world including CNN.com, Investor's Business Daily, The Toronto Star, Taipei Times and Australia Sunday Telegraph.

In this piece, I quoted Vincent Mark, M.D., an environmental physician from California and Hawaii, who supported my theory that air rage was caused by oxygen deprivation. Dr. Mark said: "Curtailment of fresh air in airplanes can be causing deficient oxygen in the brains of passengers, and this often makes people act belligerent, even crazy. I'm positive about this, and it can be proven with a simple blood test."

My air rage theory was later peer reviewed by Dr. Ross Lee Graham from the University of Linkoeping, Sweden. Dr. Graham wrote me: "I am very much impressed with your work concerning health in flight. My findings concerning environmental anemia actually re-enforce your original insight. My own work on this subject delves into the physiology of the oxygen deprivation and my results back up your original thesis."

I feel certain that air rage is caused by recirculated cabin air, which results in oxygen deprivation for passengers and flight attendants. Passengers may be surprised that flight attendants actually suffer more oxygen deprivation than passengers do because they are using up more oxygen running around in the cabin.

In my day, flight attendants never used to yell back at passengers. Since I stopped flying, I have served as an expert witness in a number of lawsuits involving 'air rage' and 'crew rage' where there were huge expenses involved with unscheduled landings, jail time and humiliation for passengers, career changes for flight attendants, and in at least one case, the death of a passenger.

August 11, 2000: Six passengers beat to death a 19 year-old, 6-foot-tall passenger, Jonathan Burton. The Southwest flight attendants were on their sixth and last flight of the day, by the end of which, they would have been on their feet for 15 hours.

The flight was turbulent and Jonathan was unruly. His unruliness started when he grabbed a cup of water off one of the flight attendant's tray without saying, May I? She chastised him.

The next unruly thing Jonathan did was to grab peanuts from the galley, again without asking, May I?

Then, Jonathan attempted to enter the forward lavatory; he couldn't, so he paced up and down this single-aisle plane, screamed Who is flying the plane?, and kicked the cockpit door. He broke it.

Several passengers gathered around, listening, talking and offering Jonathan more water and this stopped him from being unruly. He told them that the last time he had flown had been 14 years earlier, after his father had died.

Ten minutes before landing, flight attendants insisted that the passengers move Jonathan because he was seated in an exit row.The passengers, who had been calming him, were then joined by an alleged off-duty cop (who turned out to be a security guard) and, without saying May I, this group of six men began to forcibly move Jonathan away from the exit row.

In the process, the security guard twisted Jonathan’s wrist. The 19-year-old Jonathan punched the guard in self defense.

Then the six helper passengers held Jonathan to the floor. According to an eye witness, Jonathan was face down in the aisle and “...two people had his feet, two people had his arms...someone was...holding his neck and someone was jumping on top of him...And Jonathan was saying ‘Okay, I’ll stop, I’m sorry. Just please get off of me.’” This was the last thing Jonathan said.

After landing, Jonathan, unconscious or dead, was handcuffed and carried off the plane. He was pronounced dead less than one hour after landing. The cause of death was “asphyxiation.”

Jonathan's panic attack appears to have been triggered by being chastised by a flight attendant for taking a cup of water off her tray.

PANIC ATTACKS ARISE IN THE SKIES

In May 2009, on a long London to LA nonstop, a female passenger, Galina Rusanova, punched and kicked flight attendants, then got on the floor and tried to bite a flight attendant's leg.

In air-rage incidents, flight attendants have been attacked in many ways: struck with wine bottles, thrown across the aircraft, slapped and pinched.

In my day, we were occasionally pinched inappropriately, but I don't remember any stews being assaulted on board.

We stews were trained, and had the time, to defuse unruly passengers. My style as in-flight purser was to listen to why they were unhappy with our service and try my best to make it up to them. I gave them all my attention and looked them in the eyes...

I remember an incident in my recurrent training, where the question of looking the passenger in the eyes came up; this involved a passenger who was supposed to be frozen with fear.

Our assignment was to imagine that we had to evacuate a planeload of passengers, but one passenger was 'frozen with fear' and wouldn't get out of her seat. This passenger was another flight attendant assigned to recurrent training that day. I had never met her, but it was my job to get her out of her seat and it was her job not to move unless she felt I did a good job.

I kneeled down in the aisle next to her and looked deeply in her eyes. When I felt the energetic connection, I smiled at her and asked her if she would come with me because we needed to leave the airplane right away. I took her hand and she allowed me to escort her off the plane.

"Hold it. Hold it." said our instructor. He grabbed a bottle of whisky from the cart in our mock-up airplane cabin and then pretended to drink it without taking off the cap. "What was that?" he said to me.

I answered, "I contacted her through her eyes."

He made a face of incredulity. Everyone laughed. "No," he said. "The correct way to get a passenger who is frozen with fear to leave the aircraft is to slap her."

The airlines still have this same modus operandi. When there is an unruly passenger on board, flight attendants are instructed to yell to other passengers to immobilize the unruly one in whatever way is necessary. Slapping is permitted. Handcuffs and duct tape are provided on board.

The airlines are treating ill and disgruntled passenger-air-rage incidents as possible terrorist-type threats. On closer examination, many of these passengers could likely be only slightly unbalanced before takeoff, then this unbalance is exacerbated by the low-oxygen environment on board.

If these passengers had been very unbalanced prior to takeoff, they would not have made it through the security filtering which starts when entering the airport, continues at the ticket counter, amplifies at the TSA take-your-shoes-off bottleneck, and is also in operation at the gate.

If left to the airlines, adequate oxygen for passengers will never take it's place as an important issue deserving of serious consideration.

Adequate oxygen for passengers and flight attendants is essential for our health, safety and well being. Adequate oxygen in airplane cabins needs to become an FAA no-go regulation, i.e. the plane does not go without it.

DIANA'S TIPS FOR AIR RAGE ON AIRPLANES

TIP 1. IF you find yourself on board with an unruly passenger, don't confront him or her. Leave your seat and seek out the head flight attendant, aka 'first flight attendant' or 'purser.' Tell the purser that there's a disruptive passenger doing X, and he's seated at row/seat number XX. For example: The passenger in 27E is peeing on his seat and singing very loud.

TIP 2. IF you find yourself acting like an unruly passenger, remember that tolerance is the only way to fly — without the risk of getting arrested.

MANY MORE PRACTICAL AND INTRIGUING STRATEGIES FOR AIRLINE PASSENGERS ARE OFFERED IN FLYANA WORKSHOPS AND CONSULTATIONS