Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who slid down an escape chute after losing his temper with an uncooperative passenger, has become an overnight folk hero to burned-out workers.

Tens of thousands showed their support for Mr. Slater on a Faceebook site dedicated to him. But career counselors say the 38-year-old resident of New York City's borough of Queens has probably done his job prospects grave damage, and that there were better ways to deal with stress.

Due to layoffs "most people are doing much more work than they ever did before. There are a lot of people who empathize with the idea of 'I've had it. I can't take it. I can't do it one more minute,'" said Marina London, a clinical social worker and media representative for the Employee Assistance Professionals Association, which trains workplace counselors.

She believes Mr. Slater's meltdown could have been prevented, but finds it difficult to imagine circumstances under which an airline would take him back. JetBlue has said he is suspended, pending investigation.

"Airlines have very, very very strict standards of conduct that usually far exceed what is in place at other companies. ... What I do think would be tragic is if this guy served prison time for this," Ms. London said.

Mr. Slater's bail was set at $2,500 Tuesday when he was arraigned in Queens on charges of criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and trespassing.

According to prosecutors, after the flight from Pittsburgh landed at New York's JFK airport, Mr. Slater quarreled with a passenger, made an obscene speech over the intercom, grabbed a beer and deployed the emergency chute, causing at least $25,000 in damage and potentially harming ground workers. He slid down the chute and walked off the tarmac.

Mr. Slater told police the episode began after he intervened in an argument between two passengers. He told police a female passenger "then opened the (overhead) bin door, hitting me on the head without apologizing. I got on the microphone and said to those of you who have shown dignity and respect these last 20 years, thanks for a great ride."

At that point, Mr. Slater told police, "I accessed the porthole, pulled the door handle inflating the slide, took my baggage and slid down the slide and left."

Mr. Slater's attorney, Howard Turman, has said that Mr. Slater, a longtime flight attendant, was stressed from caring for his cancer-stricken mother, and that the dispute with the passenger began in Pittsburgh. She was competing with another woman for space in the overhead bin, and a suitcase struck Mr. Slater in the head, his attorney said. Mr. Turman said the woman had to gate-check her bag, and was livid when it wasn't ready upon landing.

She "cursed him out a great deal," Mr. Turman said. "At some point, I think he just wanted to avoid conflict with her."

By 7 p.m. Tuesday more than 50,000 people declared themselves supporters of Mr. Slater on a page on Facebook dedicated to him. It linked to a site that claimed to take donations for him.

Most posts used words such as "Bravo!" and "Free Slater." A man who wrote "This is your job. You have to handle it" drew angry retorts.

A woman who said she was a former flight attendant posted on a thread urging readers to contact JetBlue on Mr. Slater's behalf.

"I could tell story after story of meals being thrown at me, dirty diapers handed to me, cussed at, etc. Steven was stressed over a very thankless job and JetBlue should get this flight attendant help and not penalize him!!!! Arrest the passenger!"

Aspects of the incident reflect the findings of a study by the International Air Transport Association, a trade group representing 230 airlines, showing a global trend of increasingly unruly passengers.

The study, compiled early this year, indicated that unruly behavior has increased since 2007, said Steven Lott, spokesman for the association's North America region. There were about 2,500 incidents reported. Raw data was not available, and tallies for the second of half of 2009 were projections.

Out of eight categories, the most common involved illegal consumption of narcotics or cigarettes followed by refusal to comply with safety instructions, verbal confrontations with crew members or other passengers, and uncooperative passengers.

Mr. Lott said the biggest obstacle to modifying passenger behavior was a lack of uniformity in punishing people who act up, meaning there is no "potent deterrent."

"You could probably count on one hand the number of passengers who were prosecuted or brought to court. Most of the time they were given a slap on the wrist and sent home," Mr. Lott said.

About 95 percent of the time, flight attendants and gate agents handle conflict with grace, said a man who works for an airline, anonymously monitoring flight crew behavior. It's a high-stress job, and gaffes like Mr. Slater's are not unheard of, said the man, who asked the Post-Gazette to withhold his name and the airline he works for.

On one flight he saw a passenger reach for overhead luggage while the plane was leaving the gate, a violation of FAA regulations.

"The flight attendant saw it and got on the PA system and just berated and blew out the passenger to the point where it got ridiculous," he said. "He just lost it, and it went on for five or 10 minutes."

The flight attendant was eventually fired, said the man.

He said the most common flash points are flight delays, canceled flights and missed connections. Increasingly, passengers who carry on too much luggage -- to avoid new checked baggage fees -- ignite problems.

"That's just a nightmare," he said. "They've created a monster with that."

Flight attendants are trained to remain polite even under infuriating circumstances.

And partly because nearly every airline uses monitors, employees typically keep frustration under wraps, he said.

"They're not going to blow it," he said. "They know their job could be on the line. ... They know we're out there."

But a Pittsburgher who says that Mr. Slater was his flight attendant one day earlier recalled him as high-strung and grumpy despite an uneventful flight.

Joe Miksch, a magazine editor from the North Side, flew Jet Blue to New York on Sunday. Mr. Slater greeted passengers in the doorway. "He really seemed to be forcing a smile. He seemed a lot less sincere than they usually do," Mr. Miksch said.

During the short flight, "He seemed exasperated when I asked him for a Coke after I had already had a bottle of water. It seemed like a great deal of trouble for him," Mr. Miksch said. Mr. Slater didn't say anything, but sighed in a way that indicated he felt put-upon, he said.

That doesn't surprise Ms. London, from the employee assistance organization. Flight attendants and their supervisors should have been given extensive training in recognizing signs of burnout in themselves and co-workers, she said.

"I would be shocked if he had been totally quiet all of this time and not shown any signs. Presumably if his supervisor had been trained in recognizing that this was somebody who was under a lot of pressure, they could have made a referral to an employee assistance program and he would have gotten intervention and support," she said.

She has no inside information and wondered what the other flight attendants were doing.

"Imagine if another flight attendant had come and said, 'Let me handle this person. Why don't you go relax or take a chill?' That would have circumvented this," she said.

Mateo Lleras, corporate communications director for JetBlue, said the airline has an employee assistance program, but that he couldn't discuss it during the investigation.

Karen Litzinger, a career counselor, job search coach and business etiquette trainer in Regent Square, said provocation and stress were no excuse.

"Some of this is about etiquette and common courtesy on both sides, the passenger and the flight attendant," she said.

"Unless you're in grave danger, I just don't think that you react back to the [passenger]. You take the high road, and maybe call security. ... You can try to manage other people, but the only thing we can really control is our own behavior."

She had had clients whose job stress was so severe that they took medical leaves. Many people's job stress is compounded by family difficulties, she said, "But a person really needs to keep that in check or get help."

Washington correspondent Daniel Malloy writes the "Pittsburgh On The Potomac" blog exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.