How DID a plane ride become a one-way ticket to hell? Now our nightmare co-pilots are punch-ups, diarrhea and profanity - and KARA KENNEDY blames the fame hungry influencer-wannabes

America's air travel is now as lawless as its subways.

Profanity, assaults and — yes — urination and defecation.

In recent months, viral videos of increasingly chaotic and unbelievable mid-air depravity have flooded news websites and social media feeds.

Just this week, a crazed woman pulled down her pants in an attempt to relieve herself in the aisle of a Frontier Airlines plane departing from Florida. 'I don't give a f***… I gotta pee!' she screamed. This was after she had reportedly 'threatened to kill' another passenger.

Shocking — but hardly surprising anymore.

In March, a 21-year-old drunkard traveling on an American Airlines flight from New York to Delhi was arrested after urinating on a fellow passenger.

And we all remember diarrhoea-gate.

In scenes akin to a horror film, a Delta flight was forced to turn back to Atlanta in September, requiring a five-hour clean — and the removal of its carpets — after a passenger left an ungodly mess down the ENTIRE length of the cabin. The stench was said to be unbearable, with the vanilla disinfectant only making the situation worse.

If free-flowing bodily fluids weren't bad enough, mid-aid bust ups are now par for the course.

Another recent Frontier flight saw a screaming, sobbing woman dragged through the plane by airline employees. Then, as another man started up a heated confrontation with staff — what are these people on?! — the detained woman proceeded to clamber over the seats, punching staff in her attempted getaway. Meanwhile, another anarchist broke out in gospel song.

Truly, gone are the days when screaming babies were the worst disruption you could expect on a plane. American air travel is now an ungovernable hellscape.

The role of social media in all this is not lost on me.

A lot of the blame surely lies with 'Crazy Plane Lady' — aka Tiffany Gomas, aka the 'that mother f***er isn't real' woman — who was filmed having a pre-flight breakdown over a supposedly ghostly presence on board.

Instead of retreating in embarrassed silence, Gomas has used the incident to transform herself into something of a Z-lister.

Playing coy in a preposterous TMZ interview she informed reporters that she had 'been told that I cannot comment right now' on what she supposedly 'saw'. 'Told by who?' We all didn't ask.

In a tearful Instagram 'apology' — glammed-up in heavy eye shadow, her hair blow-dried to perfection — she said the event had been 'life-altering', ending with a teasing: 'Stay tuned!'

Gomas now has 135,000 Instagram followers and 190,000 on Twitter, where she describes herself as a 'viral personality'.

In many ways she's right, because she's spawned a viral pandemic of influencer-wannabes, desperate for their moment in the sun.

Soon after Gomas's outburst, footage emerged of another leggy brunette being booted off an American Airlines plane. 'Call me a b**** again… Shut the f*** up,' she yelled at fellow passengers, with the telling sign off: 'Film me, I'm Instagram famous. You f***ing bum.'

The offender in question was Miami-based influencer Morgan Osman, 'famed' — in the loosest sense of the word — for her stints on reality TV, including series 5 of 'The Bad Girls Club'.

It's hard not to see this for what it was: an attempted mid-air relaunch — and a depressing indication, if we needed one, that the widespread hunger for fleeting social-media celebrity now trumps the time and comfort of potentially hundreds of other well-meaning and paying passengers cooped up with you in a plane.

But what's the solution? It's not like Americans everywhere can simply take to cross-state highways whenever they wish to visit far-flung family and friends. Who on Earth has the time?

And the problem is, the airport and airline companies know we have no other option.

Recall the TSA thieves — two security guards caught on camera in September stealing from bags as they passed through scanners.

At Miami International Airport, Josue Gonzalez and Labarrius Williams pocketed at least $600 in cash from one unsuspecting traveller.

Can we no longer rely on even those charged with protecting us to have our backs?

As Thanksgiving rolled around again this year, so did the inevitable headlines.

As more than 2.6 million Americans prepared to fly to their Turkey Day destinations, some 3,000 were already reportedly delayed by Tuesday afternoon, citing bad weather.

Cue the recognisable images of waiting passengers, lined up in their thousands, vacations and time off from work thrown into disarray.

It's almost as if the people running our airports don't have calendars — because as every major public holiday approaches, so too do the interminable cancellations, delays and disruptions.

This is supposed to be the greatest country on Earth, a veritable Mecca of commerce and industry. America put man on the Moon and invented the light bulb. But plane travel in 2023? Oh no, that's a step too far.

The truth is that the state of the aviation industry is a stain on this nation.

The delays, epic mid-flight punch-ups, mishandled luggage, indecent exposure and attention-whore irritants are just one part of it. There's also the punishing add-on fees, the crippling lack of legroom, the vomit-inducing food.

It's hard to envisage that much-talked-of golden age where air travel was the height of sophistication and luxury.

Now you're lucky to jump on a plane without encountering something worthy of a viral video — or worse, to leave your flight untouched by human excrement.