2 hours ago
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October 16, 2025 — 5:00am
It’s just before midnight: hundreds of tired passengers shuffle aboard the single-aisle plane, hoping for a little sleep before landing in Sydney. My husband, daughter (then aged 11) and I have seats with slightly extra legroom towards the pointy end, sectioned off by a flimsy curtain. It’s no business class, but a slight buffer from the economy passengers crammed in behind us. Or so we think. A couple in their late 30s – red-eyed, red-faced and bickering – clamber into the row behind us and I break out in a cold sweat at the sound of beer cans being cracked open.
Sure enough, things get ugly. There’s an angry diatribe, pushing and shoving. Our daughter, and every passenger within earshot, is woken by yelling while feet and elbows pummel into the back of our seat. My husband asks if they can calm down. You can imagine how that goes.
Roughly two hours into the 5.5-hour flight fists begin flying. There’s hitting, shouting and shoving. I can’t repeat the language. The cabin crew repeatedly try to de-escalate things. An hour or so before we land, the troublemakers finally pass out, a mess of tangled limbs and tear-stained faces.
The popular Bali-Australia route is largely considered one of the worst for bad behaviour. Yes, passengers can misbehave on any flight. However, according to a report published in this masthead, flight attendants say “a different demographic” of flyers makes this route particularly problematic.
“Anywhere there are bogans basically flying for a cheap holiday is where you’ll encounter the problems,” said one flight attendant. Passengers vaping in the toilets, verbal and physical abuse. One passenger even opened a door mid-flight. These are just some of the incidents making headlines on what is dubbed the “Bogan missile”, “Bogan Bus” or “Flying Bunnings sausage sizzle” in online passenger forums.
Some believe it’s a lethal mix of the late departure time ex-Denpasar (although that doesn’t explain bad behaviour on daytime flights from Australia) and passengers being encouraged to buy food and drink from back-of-seat menus, prompting continual pressing of the call bell.
Overnight flights out of Denpasar are full of overtired passengers, many with young children in tow. The short flight time means no one gets a good sleep, least of all the cabin crew. To make matters worse, many passengers have been drinking – at beach clubs and cheap beachside bars under Indonesia’s hot sun – since checking out of their rooms at 11am.
Beverage carts occupying a lone aisle are yet another cause of frustration, meaning lavatories can’t easily be accessed. With limited space onboard and some passengers treating the plane as a Sunday session, it’s a recipe for disaster.
It doesn’t matter if you’re flying to or from Bali, or even which airline you fly. Earlier this year, a brawl broke out on a Jetstar flight from Melbourne to Bali with threats and a physical altercation. The year before, on that exact same route, another Jetstar flight was forced to turn around after a woman unleashed an angry outburst on other passengers.
A man had to be restrained, passengers pinning him to the ground, after he lunged at a flight attendant, while an Australian family were kicked off their Qantas flight home from Bali after a tense altercation with cabin crew. And these are just the reported cases.
A colleague of mine flying to Bali rang his call bell when young passengers started spraying beer around the cabin. The attendant shrugged, saying, “What do you expect? It’s a Bali flight.” Faced with passengers gone rogue, flight attendants – across social media and in articles addressing the alarming increase in air rage – advise staying calm and speaking politely to the person causing the offence.
If that fails, speak privately with cabin crew who are trained in handling onboard conflict. If there’s room, ask to move seats and use noise-cancelling headsets and eye masks to shut out disturbances. Or fly on a Tuesday or Wednesday when flights are less full. Alternatively follow my lead and avoid the overnight flight home from Denpasar, booking one of the limited daytime flights back to Oz instead.
I often stay overnight at a Brisbane Airport hotel before flying home to Newcastle the next day. While there’s no guarantee there’ll be no bad behaviour on daytime flights, you at least arrive home rested, instead of tired from broken sleep on the red-eye.
As Forrest Gump said, flying the Bali route is pretty much a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. To my horror, while boarding a Garuda flight a few years back, I realised almost every passenger, bar myself and a couple of mums, was heading to Bali for schoolies.
Bracing myself, I buckled in beside three teenage boys from country NSW. To my surprise, they’d never been on a plane before and politely asked for help with their seat-belt buckles and arrival cards. When the drink cart came around, they declined alcohol, admitting they’d not yet turned 18.
So yes, things can and do go wrong on Bali flights, but don’t let it put you off. Once that balmy air hits you, and you spot a smiling face holding your name card among the throng of Balinese drivers, you know you’re in for a magical holiday.
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