Dealing with Unruly Passengers Is All the Rage

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.

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.

In the Black Following the attack on the Airtours flight, Airtours officials called for a national database to be created and maintained by the Civil Aviation Authority listing people convicted of assaults against air crew or endangering flights. Although individual airlines maintain their own lists of unwelcome passengers, an international list could be used by airlines to prohibit passengers who have shown violent tendencies on other carriers from boarding their planes, potentially heading off a repeat offense.

At the same time, IATA is in the process of developing an international blacklist of violent passengers, but several complications prevent a definite timetable for its release. For starters, such a list is difficult to coordinate with dozens of airlines operating in numerous different jurisdictions. It also is expensive to maintain and could open airlines up to the possibility of lawsuits. "There are plenty of people with the same name around the world," said one Virgin Atlantic official, questioning how airlines would be able to distinguish the violent passenger from others with the same name.

But even a global blacklist does not actually solve a problem which is not yet fully understood. Industry observers point to several possible causes of air rage - smaller seats, fuller flights, increased delays and tighter restrictions on carry-on luggage. Nonetheless, the most commonly perceived culprit besides alcohol is the rapid and thorough elimination of smoking on almost all flights around the world. "In the last couple years, we've had a very sudden tapering off of smoking seats in aircraft," said IATA's Goodyear. At the same time, he added, there has been an increase in the average length of flights. Those factors combined are very likely to be blamed for a large percentage of the escalation in air rage incidents. Preventing Problems IATA's soon-to-be-released guidelines for dealing with unruly passengers indicate prevention is the best cure. Some suggestions offered in those recommendations will include:

* Prevention begins in the airport - do not allow passengers who are showing signs that they are likely to be a problem board the aircraft.

* Once passengers are on board, attempt to create a calm atmosphere.

* Continuously communicate with passengers - if there is a delay, tell people exactly what is happening in order to minimize the stress of uncertainty.

* Gear passengers up ahead of time for non-smoking flights. Make it very clear from the outset that smoking is not permitted so they will be psychologically prepared.

* Flight attendants should be slow to arrive with that third drink if it looks like a passenger may be intoxicated.

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