Two Airlines Make the Skies a Little Friendlier

In a rare bout of coordinated lucidity from an industry known for making even its most loyal customers question the existence of God or justice, Delta Airlines and Jet Blue have announced they are banning in-flight voice calls on all their planes. The decision comes in response to overwhelming consumer feedback sought by a number of different airlines in the wake of deliberations by both the FAA and FCC to relax or remove prohibitions on in-flight cellphone usage.

While usage rules have already been relaxed for take-off and landing since early November—a welcome relief for many cell-phone game enthusiasts—in-flight voice calls represent the final frontier for portable electronic devices on airplanes. They also represent, if the initial consumer feedback is to be believed, a bridge too far. A majority of Delta customers surveyed in 2012, for instance, said “on-board calling would detract from the flying experience.” A JetBlue representative told NBC, “We’ve heard from many customers, and the majority have shared that they do not want voice or video calls allowed on board.”

This decision by two major American air carriers is a major step in the right direction when it comes to the politics of shared spaces. Everything about air travel since 9/11 has taken the shape of herding cattle into rail cars, and the result has been a commensurate reduction in civility. Have you ever watched a seasoned business traveler (before TSA pre-check) in the security line behind a family of four at 6am? Or the line-up at a Southwest gate for a delayed flight to Orlando or Las Vegas? Or the collection of sweating bodies that surround the boarding door in a scattered semi-circle as the gate agent plods through 10 discrete boarding groups for the 8th time that day; passengers in later boarding groups getting more and more anxious because they might have to gate-check their rollaboard suitcase that has been stuffed so full it looks like a Fiat 500?

These people are all one sideways glance, one ill-toned comment, one accidental bump, from going ballistic. My wife is both a travel veteran and a veteran of the travel industry. In her day-to-day personal and professional life, she is sweet, engaged, courteous and solicitous. Everybody loves her. But give her a rollaboard and a boarding pass and she morphs into an emotionless Terminator. Eyes fixed forward, face expressionless, bag firmly in tow, she powers from security to the gate like a wrecking ball of intention. I’m 6'5" with a long stride, she’s 5'4" and often in 4-inch heels. When we travel together, I can’t keep up with her. The humanity has just melted away. The first time I witnessed it, by the time I got to our gate she was already seated and reading. I was like, “I don’t even know who you are anymore!”

Now, imagine these tendencies at 35,000 feet on a full flight, and all of the sudden you hear some jackass back in 27C shout, “Hey. Hey! Guess where I am! I’m flying. In a plane! Up in the air ‘n shit…wait, what? I can’t hear you…TALK SLOWER.” What do you think is going to happen if that occurs on a cross-country redeye? Or on the last flight out the day before Thanksgiving? Or one of the Friday evening flights out of LaGuardia, SFO, Hartsfield-Jackson, DFW and O’Hare that are packed with commuters headed home?

I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen: fools gonna get got.

See, this is not just about civility for Delta and JetBlue. This is about liability. You allow in-flight voice calls and fights will break out. People will get hurt. Stuff will get broken. And I promise you, there are not enough air marshals on this planet nor flight attendants in their union willing or able to prevent that from happening.

How do I know this? Because I am regularly on one of those flights I just described and I really don’t know if I possess the self-control necessary not to get up and drop the People’s Elbow on Vinny Bag-o-Doughnuts back there in 27C. What is scarier: 30,000 flights take off and land every day in the United States and if in-flight voice calls are allowed by airlines, some portion of those 30,000 flights is going to have a Vinny-in-27C every day for at least the first six months that calls are permitted.

Frankly, the decision is a no-brainer—as the leadership at Delta and JetBlue can surely attest. It’s a simple cost-benefit analysis. The equation for in-flight passenger voice calls looks like this:

dT(wD x nB) + (nC x V/n) / sL x sM = pH

Roughly translated, it means:

departure Time, as affected by the combination of weather Delays and the number of drinks you had at the Bar, plus not just the number of Calls made in the air but their average Volume, can be either mitigated or exacerbated by the combination of your seat Location and your seat Mate, when it comes to determining the potential number of passenger Homicides.

As you can see, it doesn’t matter if you are a passenger concerned with civility, an airline concerned with liability, or a crewmember concerned responsibility, in-flight voice calls are a recipe for disaster. It’s science.

Nils Parker is the founder of Command+Z Content and partner at the story-telling agency, Story Ark Creative.