Ex-flight attendant reveals the most dangerous part of flying

Portrait of young woman with hands on her head looking at the camera. Studio shot, grey background.

By Christian Fleetwood

A former flight attendant from Virgin Airlines has gone on the record to reveal passengers are more of a threat than turbulence.

Ally Murphy told Fox News the most difficult part of her job was dealing with “difficult and violent flyers”, and said she was often on the receiving end of “inappropriate” behaviour because of her job.

“The tapping of the behind to get my attention — that’s kind of inappropriate,” she told Fox News’ Watters World show.

“I wouldn’t tap someone on the behind for any other reason, but apparently on a plane you can do that.”

Murphy said defusing difficult and sometimes violent passengers was also a real part of the cabin crew’s jobs, and they were “regularly trained” to deal with “tense situations”.

The ex-flight attendant also revealed a particularly difficult experience she had with a man, who was flying with his wife and had mixed sleeping pills with a bottle of wine smuggled onto the plane.

“(He) drunk an entire bottle of wine to himself, little did we know,” she said.

“But the two together (sleeping pills and alcohol), they can kind of create a reaction where you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t sleep, but you have no idea what you’re doing.

“This guy went around and he stole all the other passengers’ shoes and was trying them on, and then he sat next to his wife, didn’t recognise her.

“Then he suddenly thought, ‘I want to get off here’, so he tried to open the aircraft door, which of course meant we had to jump on him and restrain him.

“We pinned him down, and then he passed out, and then it became a medical situation,” she told Fox News.

Murphy also told Fox News that while she had not been physically assaulted on any flights, she was aware of other flight attendants that had, saying that “a couple of my friends have received punches”.

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