An airplane pilot went viral for scolding his passengers—Harvard expert says it’s great leadership: ‘Bravo’

When a video of an American Airlines pilot scolding his passengers during a pre-flight announcement went viral, some people deemed it patronizing.

Others, including a Harvard University expert, are hailing the pilot’s speech as an example of strong leadership — at a time when passengers desperately need it.

“I say bravo to the American Airlines pilot. He has every right to do that. He’s the captain of the flight, and he’s in charge of what happens,” Bill George, an executive fellow at Harvard Business School and author of “True North: Emerging Leader Edition,” tells CNBC Make It. “If something goes wrong, he has the obligation to go back to the nearest airport and land ... and no passenger likes that.”

In the video, which started circulating last week, the pilot set some ground rules for his passengers — including what they should expect from their flight attendants, and how they should treat each other during the journey.

“Remember, the flight attendants are here for your safety. After that they’re here to make your flight more enjoyable,” the pilot said. “They’re going to take care of you guys but you will listen to what they have to say because they represent my will in the cabin, and my will is what matters.”

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The pilot added: “Be nice to each other. Be respectful to each other. I shouldn’t have to say that ... But I have to say it every single flight, because people don’t. And they’re selfish and rude, and we won’t have it.”

He told passengers to store their bags properly, avoid leaning or falling asleep on other people, and use headphones instead of playing audio out loud on speakers.

Lastly, the pilot acknowledged the plight of the people in middle seats: “Middle seaters, I know it stinks to be in the middle ... You own both armrests. That is my gift to you. Welcome on board our flight.”

The speech — “a little bit of fatherhood,” as the pilot deemed it — serves as a counterpoint to a bevy of recent videos depicting outbursts aboard aircrafts. Airlines have seen a significant uptick in unruly passenger reports: nearly 2,500 last year and 6,000 in 2021, compared to roughly 1,200 in 2019 and less than 1,000 in years prior, according to Federal Aviation Administration data.

The FAA has referred more than 250 of those cases to the Federal Bureau of Investigations since 2021, a move reserved for particularly violent incidents, the Wall Street Journal reported in April.

Given that backdrop, George applauds the pilot, noting that commercial airline captains “have the right to do these things.”

It’s not a one-size-fits-all leadership approach, he adds: “In the office, it’s more nuanced. You’re not dealing with a situation that might put people in physical harm, or could be potentially dangerous.”

CEOs and bosses have “the right to set some standards of behavior,” but scolding lectures in that kind of setting typically only make employees feel undervalued and underappreciated, George says. That could contribute to staffers “quiet quitting” their jobs — or even actually quitting.

Instead, if you’re struggling with a respect-in-the-workplace problem, talk directly with the people involved to get their perspectives and craft a more personalized, empathic solution.

“Expressing genuine empathy for someone’s circumstance and being able to walk in their shoes is an essential quality of all leaders,” George said in a 2015 interview with psychologist Daniel Goleman. “It’s the key element.”

This is long, but it is a subject that has been foremost in my mind for decades now, so I hope you all can forgive and indulge me this post.

I think the bigger issue (the root of the problem) is the lack of civility and polite behavior in our society.

Now, it is weirdly considered some kind of infringement on someone’s personal freedom to pass judgement on rude behavior, almost as if it were some kind of right for people to be rude and uncivil.

It is as if “not minding your own business” and speaking out or making a personal judgement against rude behavior is a more egregious violation of some kind than the rude or uncivil behavior itself.

I have seen repeatedly in the last 40 years, and more increasingly, that being judgmental is something bad, and it should be avoided.

I have come to believe that not only should “being judgmental” NOT be avoided, that avoiding it has serious consequences, and we are reaping the harvest that we as a society have sown.

I am a firm believer that one of the MOST damaging things we have done as a society is to eradicate the concept of shame. Shame is part of a cultural framework that has bound people together, and the removal of shame has resulted in what we now see in everything from people assaulting passengers and flight crew to people insisting it is their right to walk down the street in a parade in front of children with their genitals hanging out.

In the past, when a structure of positive personal values existed in a person (usually imparted at the end of a belt by parents, if need be, if gentle instruction was not sufficient) that was enough to compel people to say “please”, “thank you” and “excuse me” when it was appropriate.

If those values did not exist, there was a framework of judgmental and shaming mechanisms by society at large that even people lacking positive personal values would try to avoid.

We have removed both shaming and judgmental behavior in our society, and we are seeing the rotted and spoiled fruit of that tree.

Here is an example: My wife and I went to Bermuda many years ago, and Bermuda was, even at that somewhat “recent” date, nearly tyrannical in its politeness. It is apparently no longer that way now, and is more like America in this respect, but back then, Bermudians were deadly serious about politeness.

This manifested itself in a variety of odd ways. One of them was wearing of appropriate clothing and following of posted rules, both of which were expected to be observed voluntarily by all, Bermudians and Tourists alike. My wife and I stayed at a hotel, and they were very specific, no bathing suits were to be worn in the hotel lobby, shoes and shirts were to be worn. (Meaning, no bare feet) This was no super fancy hotel, either, though it was very nice.

Anyway, I had rented a small sailboat, and when I capsized it, I cut my big toe sufficiently righting it to produce a relatively constant flow of blood. I dragged the boat on the beach, and soaking wet, in my bathing suit, no shirt or shoes, hopped on one foot into the lobby to obtain medical assistance, or at least a band-aid to stop the bleeding enough to get to a position I could treat it.

I was about a quarter of the way, hopping through the lobby on one foot, when an older, black, Bermudian female employee came right up to me and began reprimanding me in a very stern (not mean or loud, but very deliberate) voice about appropriate attire in the lobby. I don’t remember exactly what she said, and it was probably not loud enough for someone ten feet away to hear clearly, but it was something like “Sir, you cannot be in this hotel lobby in a wet bathing suit with no shirt or shoes!” as she pointed at a prominently posted sign.

I stammered, pointing to my bleeding toe (should be inside a shoe) at the end of a wet leg (should be dry) protruding from a wet bathing suit (a forbidden bathing suit!) topped by a shirtless torso (probably the most egregious transgression of all) but she would have none of it, though she did soften a smidgen.

But not a lot.

The point is, this woman (and Bermudians in general back then) regarded adhesion to the visibly posted rules (and any universally known or posted rules) as a form of politeness, and expected every single person, bleeding toe or not, to observe those at the peril of even a potential private shaming as I was receiving.

I know, that sounds like overkill given my bleeding toe which I stammeringly tried to bring up in my defense. She ended up by personally walking me over to an office, where they produced a bandage and a towel, and a polite but firm admonition to avoid entering the lobby in that condition in the future, bleeding appendage or not.

But this experience was not the one that really drove home the point of just how serious Bermudians were about politeness.

On that same trip, my wife and I wanted to use the bus system to get around the island. We didn’t know exactly how it worked, but assumed if we went to a bus stop and waited, a bus would stop, allow us to board, and we would pay the driver. So we waited, and soon enough, a bus arrived and allowed us to board the somewhat crowded but, presumably Bermudians on their way to work.

When I tried to give the driver a Bermudian dollar bill, the driver became angry, and in a loud, disrespectful voice hissed at us: “You cannot pay with that. Don’t you read the rules? You MUST have the exact change? I cannot give change to every passenger. You tourists should read the rules before you get on the bus!” and followed it with a a jerking hand motion to board and take a seat and figure out our fare in some fashion.

It was very humiliating. My wife and I, both red-faced and burning with shame, walked a few rows back and seated ourselves.

About two seconds after we were seated, a black Bermudian woman behind us leaned forward and said in a firm yet accusatory tone of voice to the driver: “You shouldn’t talk to those people like that. They are guests here and don’t know how things work.”

I was about to protest quietly to this woman that it was okay, she didn’t need to make a fuss, and we were sorry we didn’t know and would remember the correct procedure next time, when I turned to look look at her we saw half a dozen people, quiet reproach towards he driver on their faces, nodding in agreement with the woman who spoke out, while reaching in their purses and pockets to pull out change to give us. (GIVE to us to pay our fare, not make change for us to give to the driver...seemingly almost a form of apology for the rudeness of the driver!)

It made me gulp then, and thinking of it even now, that undercurrent of omnipresent and kind, yet aggressive politeness present in that society brings a sense of respect and longing for that long lost sense of a valuable shared respect for courtesy that is so long gone it makes my heart ache to think it was once there, even in our own America.

Sadly, last time my wife and I went to Bermuda, that value system that Bermudians tenaciously observed is no longer apparent, and a Bermudian person I talked to said that the young people wanted no part of it, and it has atrophied and largely disappeared.

Now, courtesy and respect for others is an ancient, nearly vestigial organ in our country. It is even ridiculed or regarded as odd behavior.

My wife and I were riding the mass transit system in Boston about 20 years ago, and it was crowded with commuters. There was an elderly woman standing there, holding onto a strap, and I stood, grabbed a strap, and offered her my seat, making eye contact and motioning to the now empty seat next to my wife. What startled me is that my behavior must have been so...abnormal...for that point in time in society and in that environment, that there was nearly a look of panic on that poor woman’s face, and she jerked her face away to look in another direction.

I did not sit back down (to give her a chance to change her mind) and a young guy who was standing there watching, came over and sat down in my vacated seat.

That whole thing shocked me. I had grown up being imbued with the values of please, thank you, yes sir, yes ma’am, open a door for anyone, offer your seat to an older or pregnant woman (it was originally to “give your seat to a woman, but after I saw the look of abject hostility when I tried that from “any woman”, I saw that ship had left port a long time before that) and so on.

I miss that sense of civility. I miss it, and I believe, our society misses it FAR more than I do, but misses it because it now give free reign to anyone to to behave in nearly any manner they wish.

Even (and especially) here on Free Republic.

On this forum, I am no saint in this. I am just as often rude and mean to people as anyone else I see. I try to rationalize that this is a place where sharp-elbowed discourse can be the norm, and try to maintain a thicker skin, but that has been a flaw in my character my whole life which I constantly combat.

I make a point of trying to not say something to a person on this forum that I would not say to someone if they were standing in front of me in person, but in real life, I can be irrational and hot-headed, and I say things I regret. In this, I fail often enough (as I do in many other aspects of my life) but just as quickly, I regret it, try to apologize whether the person is deserving of an apology or not or wants an apology or not. I don’t succeed all the time, but I make it a point to try. Being married as long as I have, I understand fully the “Don’t go to bed angry” frame of mind, and subscribe to it when I can.

If I fail, I pick myself back up and vow to do better next time.

I have only made a small number of real enemies on here, but I do have persons I simply don’t respond to because I have deemed that civil discourse is not possible with them. But having nearly 100,000 posts, and only having a few (probably less than five) that I have determined I shouldn’t talk to, I think I am succeeding in my efforts to keep things above board, at least for my part. (There are likely many who feel that way about me, and won’t respond) I guess it would be best to have none in this class, but...none of us is perfect.

With that, I issue a heartfelt and genuine apology to those who read this that I may have been uncivil to, and vow to try to do better in the future. You deserve better, and so do I.

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