Disobeying safety procedures biggest cause of bad onboard behavior

by CHIEF CORRESPONDENT, TOM BALLANTYNE  

December 1st 2018

Print Friendly

If anyone thought incidents of unruly behavior by airline passengers were fading away, they would be wrong. Read More » According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the frequency of bad behaviour on board is increasing.

The association’s most recent statistics on the subject reveal that in 2017 there was one incident for every 1,053 flights compared with one every 1,424 flights a year earlier.

IATA’s assistant director for external affairs, Tim Colehan, said it was a common perception to blame over-consumption of alcohol as the main cause of unruly passenger behaviour but this was not totally correct.

According to IATA’s statistics alcohol/intoxication accounted for 27% of all the 2017 incidents. Another 24% involved non-compliance with smoking regulations. The largest percentage, 49%, was the result of non-compliance with other safety regulations.

“When we look at intoxication, we see that 562 out of the 2,454 cases, or 23%, related to passengers drinking alcohol they had brought on board,” Colehan said. “We know that the remaining amount relates mostly to alcohol consumed before boarding.

“What can we conclude from these figures? Well, they show unruly passenger incidents remain a significant issue. We know they are committed by a tiny minority of our customers, but they have disproportionate impact on other passengers, crew and the operation of a flight.”

Colehan said one of the major issues airlines have in controlling bad inflight behaviour is closing the gap international law that can allow inflight offenders to escape prosecution. “But we know travellers want unruly passengers to face consequences over their misbehaviour,” he said.

In a recent IATA Poll, 32% of the 2,500 people surveyed had witnessed unruly or inappropriate behaviour in the previous six months. Eighty per cent of the respondents thought the perpetrators should be subject to criminal prosecution.

“A second element of IATA’s work on unruly passengers is to promote ratification of the Montreal Protocol 2014, or MP14. It addresses this issue by ensuring States have the necessary powers to deal with unruly passengers irrespective of place of the aircraft’s registration,” Colehan said.