In this training module we will provide crewmembers with useful conflict management information that they can use in their job. Dealing with passengers on a daily basis isn’t easy and just as police officers can grow weary of dealing with individuals, crewmembers can easily fall into the same trap. We will not bog down the reader with complicated solutions, exhaustive study, and drawn out explanations to conflict. We want to provide simple and effective techniques that will make crewmember jobs much easier as they come into the traveling public.
Crewmembers see conflicts occurring all around in their workplace. Flights that are running late or cancelled, passenger stress over 9/11, standing in line and treated like a terrorist at the security checkpoints, crowded aircraft, tense labor negotiations, etc. etc, etc all add tension to both passenger and crewmember.
Some crewmembers are able to handle the difficulties professionally and in stride while others seem to continually get into a confrontation with passengers or other crewmembers. What’s the difference in crewmembers? Quite simply, it is the difference in training and experience. So, what we would like to do in this chapter is to establish some techniques that crews can use to maintain their sanity while getting their job done as efficiently as possible.
Striving for on-board tranquility is extremely important to the flight crew. Crewmembers should recognize that passenger rudeness and deliberate disobedience is often not a personal challenge to the crew’s authority. Fear of flying, losing control, confined in a small space, prohibition against smoking and other stresses are all associated with hostility by passengers.
One of the keys to successful conflict management is taking the right approach to the presence of conflict. The first thing you must understand is that managing conflict is DIFFICULT and most of us have never had effective training in dealing with conflict. It is easy to deal with conflict in a classroom setting; however, it is much more difficult when confronted with living and breathing human beings. Emotions and egos on both sides, as well as fatigue and stress can complicate the conflict. Having said that, effective conflict management is your RESPONSIBILITY. Why? Because your SAFETY is at risk, and it may well be that the safety of the entire crew, passengers and aircraft are at risk because you may infuriate the wrong person on the wrong day. We’re not justifying a passenger’s misdeeds, but humans can be unpredictable creatures and they can be prodded into committing acts of violence. The real key to conflict management is to understand that it is about not WHO is right, but WHAT is right. In this important module we give crewmembers or other personnel the tools in how to handle difficult passengers and people.
