This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

My wife and I leave for England in a few weeks. I've checked the map and discovered that London is much farther away than Las Vegas or Denver. Fly all the way to Disney World and you still won't even be close.

We will be flying several thousand miles over the course of 24 hours while strapped into seats designed for Third World police interrogations. I'm not looking forward to the experience.

Neither is my wife, who will have to sit next to me the entire time and listen to me complain. At some point — usually upon takeoff — she will become fed up and demand that I: A. shut up, B. take a pill(s), or C. go sit somewhere else, preferably outside.

It's not the flying that gets to me. The possibility that the plane might crash isn't all that troubling. I never expected to live much beyond a couple of years after high school. If I live long enough to finish this column, it's a bonus.

What I do have is a fear of passengers. I believe the medical term for my condition is cramophobia, otherwise known as fear of people being stuffed into inescapable containers and left completely at the sadistic mercy of those in charge.

When I say "in charge," I don't mean the flight crew. I've flown lots of places and can honestly say I've never had a single bad moment with a flight crew member.

This includes a flight attendant accidentally spilling a glass of soda down the back of my neck because of turbulence. I got a free set of pilot wings out of it.

OK, and then there was that time when a crew member threw me from a plane somewhere over Alabama. But that was in the Army, so it probably doesn't count.

Aside from that, every other flight I've taken eventually resulted in someone else being in charge of the cabin — usually the most inconsiderate and unruly passenger.

Somewhere seated within a dozen rows of me will be a relatively normal-looking individual who also happens to be drunk, high, off their meds, crazy or just utterly selfish.

For example, I was on a flight out of Seattle where a young woman wouldn't get off her cellphone so we could take off. This despite being told repeatedly by flight attendants to hang up.

I don't care whether talking on one's cellphone during takeoff actually poses a danger. What I care about is some idiot preventing us from taking off in the first place because they think they're too important to play by the rules.

I tried to tip the flight attendant who finally got fed up and pulled the woman's hand away from her ear and threatened to take away her phone. She told me the pleasure was all hers.

Then there were the two drunken soldiers on a flight from Chicago who had to be — wait, that was 'Normus and me. Never mind.

The best one of all was on a flight out of Atlanta when a newlywed couple returning from the Caribbean had a domestic meltdown over a tattoo one of them had gotten.

The captain had to come back and tell them to shut up or he would be forced to land and kick them off. The couple took one look at the passengers around them and concluded that we would lynch them long before touchdown

In preparation for our England trip, I've been watching YouTube videos of unruly airline passengers being dragged off planes by the police, hogtied by the flight crew or just having the crap drubbed out of them by other passengers.

It's been very educational. I've taken notes on how to handle situations like that — and what will happen if I become one.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.