As the skies become more crowded, with airlines squeezing more passengers onto flights, air rage incidents appear to be on the rise.

But a University of Toronto professor, who studied data on up to five million flights from an unnamed large international airline, blames it on a growing divide between the haves and the have nots, those sitting in the first-class cabin versus those in economy.

“I expected there to be more support for a lack of leg room as a contributor to air rage, given the attention that leg room has had, but there wasn’t,” says Katy DeCelles, associate professor of organizational behaviour and human resource management at the Rotman School of Management.

Almost three-quarters of incidents involved men, compared with a quarter for women, with almost two-thirds of incidents involving alcohol.

The research found more instances of air rage on flights that had both first-class and economy seating.

DeCelles said there wasn’t any significant impact based on seat size or leg room, but saw some increased frustrations due to flight delays, though the impact was less for first-class passengers.

“There was no effect for individuals in first class,” she said, speculating that those passengers may have other options, because their companies paid for their tickets or it was fully refundable.

In a research paper published Monday by the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences, DeCelles and co-author Michael Norton of the Harvard Business School that found class-based seating is both “more prevalent and more unequal in recent years, with first-class cabins claiming an increasingly large share of total space.”

And as both inequality and class-based airplane seating continue to rise, incidents of air rage may climb in frequency, the paper warns.

It found air rage to be more common in economy class on flights with first class, at a rate of 1.58 per 1,000 flights, versus 0.14 per 1,000 flights on flights without first class.

Factors in the difference could be attributed to short flights, such as regional flying, where seating is in a single class. Longer flights on larger planes will have more passengers.

DeCelles, who studies inequity, noted that if all passengers boarded from the front of the plane, in both classes, there was 2.18 times greater odds of an economy cabin incident, than if there was boarding from the middle of the plane — essentially separating the passengers.

Front boarding also led to a greater incidence of air rage — 11.86 times greater odds of an incident in first-class than boarding from the middle.

The study also noted that the types of air rage in economy and first class tended to be different — with cases in the premium cabin to be more likely due to belligerent behaviour, “involving a passenger’s expression of strong anger.”

She said those incidents are believed to be happening for reasons such as “increased entitlement” and “reduced compassion.”

Incidents in economy were more like to result from emotional outbursts, which can be anything from fear, anxiety, stress and sadness, leading to a passenger becoming uncontrollable.

DeCelles said the results have implications for any physical environment where differences in class or status are apparent — such as a tiered stadium or a workplace where lower-level employees have to pass by executive offices to get to their cubicles.

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She suggested airports and airlines could take steps to reduce the feeling that another class is being treated better, such as dual boarding areas, curtains separating cabins or even ensuring food being cooked for first-class passengers can’t be smelled in coach.

DeCelles said doesn’t believe all passengers expect equal treatment, but a decent experience.

“People have paid between several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, and they don’t want to be made to feel like second-class citizens,” she said.