The vagaries of people under pressure!

I was returning from a trip to Barcelona recently and all was going very well, check in was good, arrival at the gate fine, boarding was very quick and we pushed back from the stand early! Flight time was only 1:40 to London Heathrow which was looking like a real result.

You may or may not realise, aircraft push back while starting their own engines the aircraft tug disappears and the ground handler gives the thumbs up to the pilot and away we go. This time we push back (on time), the tug disappears and the ground handler gives the thumbs up. So what's different, well we just sit there, and sit there and sit there, other aircraft have to go around. Eventually the captain speaks and Informs the corralled masses that there is a minor fault with a computer and they are talking to London to see if they can fix it remotely (I would have thought an engineer in Barcelona was a better bet, but what do I know). Anyway as I eluded to, after 15 minutes the captain tells us they can't fix it so we need to move to a remote stand so a local engineer can look at it (forget Paul the octopus, next World Cup I'll do the predictions).

The aircraft trundles (the correct term of course is taxy's) to the remote stand where we wait for the engineer who needs steps etc which requires someone else, you can imagine the monty python sketch. Engineer plugs in laptop diagnoses, the captain says 45 minutes (there seems to be no plan b), engineer gets off, tinkers with something near the tail of the aircraft, gets back on, tests and hooray, the captain tells us that once the paperwork is done (always paperwork) we'll be on our way. We were indeed on our way and only 1:50 after we should have been!

Now you're thinking why do I care about his journey, what's the point of this, I could have boiled an egg! Well the interesting part is how people reacted inside the aircraft to various important pieces of news:

• those with connections at Heathrow
• those that had other appointments in London
• and those who think if the aircraft has a fault should we really be in it.

Let me begin with the connections, there were people who were desperate to get to their location and were bombarding different members of the cabin crew with the same questions which I have to say were fielded brilliantly. However two American ladies were only on this aircraft because their previous rebook to Newark, New Jersey had turned back with a fault (I see a pattern forming)! They were quite anxious about catching a flight to JFK from Heathrow. A Japanese couple were routing to joburg via London, strange going north to go South and were quite relaxed as they foresaw a free night in London.

Those with other appointments were intolerable, I need to get back etc etc. however they were reminded as we were on the ground, take your phone of flight mode and send a text or email. For those wanting to pick cars up on time, what was going to happen the car park sold them!

The most interesting group of all were those that were worried about the serviceability of the aircraft; one Spanish girl asked me what I thought was wrong, I said I didn't know, but if the engineer said it was ok then it must be (yeah right of course,) and we'll be fine. Some wanted to get off and I don't blame them but that wasn't an option.

Now you will recognise that there is an aircraft full of people fretting about connections worried about their dates or cars being sold at auction, people worried to death about the aircraft crashing and those happy to get more orange juice or water (which was strange, I'd have expected gin of beer!). Now the really strange thing is when the captain came on and told us we were off and thanks for the good humour, those who may miss their connection were grateful to get moving, those who may miss dates still had their cars (hopefully) and had sent texts anyway and the are we going to crash brigade were all smiles, perhaps it was hysteria.

People react in different ways to stress and pressure, some remain relaxed, others get concerned and others become aggressive and vocal. Through each of the stages in this sitcom, for it could certainly be one, all the people had the same stress response mechanisms firing in their brains which drove their behaviour. If that is the case then why didn't we all react the same? That's because other parts of our brains have greater impact, assess the situation and make a decision which appeases the more primitive area of the brain. We all have this innate ability and yet sometimes we all fly off the handle with very little provocation (me included). We can however learn to understand this better and apply levels of control; when you consider that the bodies continual use of stress hormones cannot be good, coaching around this area just seems the right thing to do. In addition to all of this, as we react differently in different situations, work, commuting etc, the same principles work.

It was however fascinating to watch the whole gambit from relaxed, to stress and anxiety, through to acceptance and then happiness. All of this unfolds in a microcosm of the aircraft and I wondered if there was anything in coaching.

Finally the great thing with modern communication all the connection missers were rebooked, in flight to new aircraft, the purser (who was previously an idiot) became a hero. Yet through all of this, I, who is normally strung out at such delays was completely relaxed. Just goes to show the power of people watching and of course staying relaxed where you have no control.