Why People Act So Weirdly at Airports

This article reprinted from Talk under Creative Commons license.

Many of us have witnessed unusual and even antisocial behavior at the airport or in flight. They can vary from benign actions, such as a dream on the floor or engage in yoga before the system for displaying information about flight to serious incidents, such as early morning drunken arguments or even an attempt to open the aircraft door in the middle of the flight.

These more sinister problems, in the visible one, have worsened in recent years, with an increase in the incidents in the fury of air and dragging flights. Such incidents led to challenges to reduce or even ban the sale of alcohol at airports and on aircraft. For example, Ryanair called for two drinks in the airport bars to stop drunken incidents on aircraft.

But what are airports that make us behave in the other way? Let’s look at psychology.

Many vacationers believe that the adventure begins at the airport, putting them in a different ability than usual. They strive to start their or two weeks of relaxed hedonism with a heyday.

Others, however, are worried about the flight, which can force them to act not by nature or take refuge in alcohol. The noise and crowd of airports also do not help. As the field of environmental psychology demonstrated, people are very sensitive to our immediate environment and can easily become “overloaded” stressors, such as a crowd and noise.

Stress and anxiety cause irritability, both temporary and on an ongoing basis. People who are generally worried are more prone to anger. And a temporary alarming mood often causes angry flashes.

In my opinion, we also need to look at the airport from a psychogeographic point of view. Psychogeography studies the influence of places on the emotions and behavior of people, especially in the urban environment.

In Celtic cultures, there is a concept of special “thin places” – often sacred groves or forests – where the veil between the material and spiritual world is thin. In thin places, we are between the two spheres, neither completely in one place, nor in the other.

In the modern technological world, airports can also be considered as “thin places”. These are limbers where the boundaries disappear. At a literal level, national boundaries dissolve. As soon as we go through security, we enter the country without a person. The concept of the place becomes foggy.

Similarly, time becomes a foggy concept at airports. Going to the plane, we are in the limonal space between two time zones, we are going to jump forward in time or even return to the past. Some flights throughout the United States, such as Atlanta in Alabama, earlier than the time of departure, when they cross the clocks. The ability to control our time gives us a sense of control over our life. This loss can be another source of anxiety.

In a different way, airports are a zone of absence, where the current moment is undesirable. Each attention turns to the future, to their flights and adventures ahead when they arrive at the destination. This intensive orientation to the future often leads to disappointment, especially if flights are postponed.