Transportation Industry

Dealing with Unruly Passengers Is All the Rage

World Airline News, Nov 20, 1998

An incident aboard an Airtours International flight in October in which a flight attendant required 18 stitches after being attacked by a passenger has thrust the issue of sky rage into the headlines. Despite the lack of data collection that would indicate exactly how much of a problem unruly passengers have become, individual airline statistics indicate that the problem has escalated dramatically over the past two years.

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The phenomenon became enough of a problem for airlines that even before the Airtours incident last month, a working group of International Air Transport Association (IATA) airlines was drafting proposed guidelines for airlines to deal with unruly passengers. The group began meeting in February and completed its recommendations within the last few weeks. In short, the group's guidelines follow the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. They stress the notion of preventing potential problem passengers from boarding the plane and they encourage airlines to minimize stress from the outset.

"The guidelines emphasize the best practices of our largest carriers," said IATA spokesman Tim Goodyear. But he emphasized that IATA "is not a legislative body and not a police body, so we can only ultimately recommend."

Those recommendations still must wind their way through layers of bureaucracy before they are formally signed off and made available to airlines and the public, but they are the first step towards providing a unified response to a problem common to all carriers.

Numbers Tell the Story Just how much of a problem is sky rage? A look at individual airlines - whose reporting requirements all differ, making direct comparisons impossible - indicates it definitely is on the rise.

United Airlines [UAL] dealt with 290 cases of unruly passengers four years ago, but has handled over 900 so far this year. Cathay Pacific has seen a 400 percent increase since 1995 in the number of incidents aboard its flights. A UK Flight Safety Committee (UKFSC) survey of 10 UK airlines found they experienced 186 incidents during just a one-month period last year.

As a result, many airlines have been rallying around the issue of sky rage in recent weeks. KLM has just launched a company-wide training program for its 11,000 employees, including flight attendants and airport staff. The training stresses prevention, but should a passenger begin to cause serious problems, the airline's new policy is to notify them that they will be banned on future flights if their behavior continues.

KLM deals with about 100 in-flight incidents a month, ranging from excessive noise to physical violence. Comparing that figure with data from past years is difficult since the Dutch carrier only recently changed the method it uses to record problems.

However, "we're seeing a definite increase in problems," said Youssef Eddinni, a KLM spokesman. Incidents of smoking in toilets are now included in KLM's tally of problems where previously they were not.

At Virgin Atlantic, several board members began meeting with the UK's Association of Chief Police, the group spearheading the effort to reverse the rising numbers of unruly passengers, in an effort to determine the best course of action to deal with problem passengers. Sky rage has not been a big problem for Virgin Atlantic with only three incidents in the past 18 months, but officials want to head it off before it does become a problem for the carrier.

Problems Aren't Limited to the U.S.

Air rage is receiving attention on the other side of the Atlantic, too. In the past few months, US Airways [U] began equipping its planes with plastic Tuff Cuffs to control passengers who are excessively problematic. Still, the percentage of total passengers who end up as an air rage statistic is infinitely small. As a result, there is no data collection and no funding available for an organization to begin to do so. Experts at the UK's Cranfield University began looking at the psychological causes of air rage, but acknowledge more research must be done and funded in order to better understand the problem.

That lack of funding is starting to be addressed by airlines. At a UKFSC-sponsored seminar on passenger behavior and aircraft safety Nov. 3, Ian Jack, head of security at British Airways (BA) called upon the British government to find a financial backer to fund "urgently needed scientific research" into the causes of air rage.

Earlier this year, BA introduced warning notices, dubbed "yellow cards" to issue to passengers as the final step in the preventing disruptive behavior. Currently, Jack is in discussions with BA's medical branch about launching a psychological study into the causes of stress that lead to disruptive behavior.

Jack pointed to inconsistencies in the ways in which disruptive passenger behavior is monitored as a major contributor to airlines' lack of understanding of the problem. For instance, in 1997, BA logged 262 incidents, yet the UK's Civil Aviation Authority had only 108 cases listed for all British registered scheduled and charter airlines during that same period. To avoid these inconsistencies, Jack urged the British government to lead an international effort to create a unified and effective reporting system among regulators.

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Transportation Industry

Dealing with Unruly Passengers Is All the Rage

World Airline News, Nov 20, 1998

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