Air rage incidents are down but Australian airlines say they are still wrestling with a steady stream of badly behaved passengers in mid-air.
An Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) report released this week, Responding to Unruly Airline Passengers: The Australian Context, has found that although air rage incidents have fallen over the last seven or eight years, Australian airlines are still dealing with a hardcore group of offenders.
During a roundtable discussion convened by the AIC in June 2015, which brought together Australian airlines, the police and other government agencies involved in airline security, one airline said it dealt with an average of 30 incidents of air rage a month.
Unruly passengers were defined as people who “through their demeanour, behaviour or failure to comply with cabin crew directions, present a threat to the safety or security of the aircraft or those on board, but who are not engaged in an act of sabotage or terrorism.”
The AIC report also used results from international studies on air rage to inform its study, partly due to the paucity of Australian information on the topic.
Air rage can take its toll on flight crew and passengers alike, such as physical and psychological injury; crew error, plunging crew moral and the cost of diverting the plane to offload a disruptive passenger, not to mention the dangers of an out of control passenger breaching the flight deck.
Bad behaviour
Incidents ranged from the mildly offensive, like swearing at cabin crew or other passengers and refusing to follow instructions to producing a weapon, physical or sexual assault or barging into the cock pit.
Airlines and security agencies discussed a number of incidents including:
Deliberately damaging the aircraft
Tampering with emergency or safety equipment
Breaching the cock pit
Abusive language
Making threats
Obscene or lewd behaviour to other passengers or crew
Intoxication
Smoking on planes
Refusing to fasten seatbelts
Who is doing it?
Historically, men aged between 18 and 35 have been the worst offenders but more women are now joining the fray.
While Australian airline representatives generally agreed that poor behaviour could not be predicted along the lines of characteristics such as gender or ethnicity, certain groups were seen as a bigger risk, including sports teams, fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) mine workers, buck’s or hen’s parties or those flying to a partying destinations, like Bali.
Some airlines have mitigated this risk by, for example, working with mining companies to restrict alcohol access and establishing expectations before take-off, or enforcing uniform wearing during travel.
“Airline representatives noted that spikes in the rate of unruly passenger incidents over the year were associated with an increased volume of passengers travelling to leisure destinations or to major sporting or entertainment events.”
Why are they doing it?
Outburst can be triggered by an intersection of personality, being drunk or high and environmental factors such as bad airline service, rows over seating and the behaviour of other passengers – such as arguments over fully reclined seats.
Contributing factors identified by a 2006-2007 US study included mental health problems and/or substance use; environmental factors such as a cabin being too hot or cold, people being cooped up in confined spaces or carry-on baggage restrictions.
Last year’s Australian airline roundtable revealed that there was no major difference between the level of air rage on high cost and low cost services, possibly because of high levels of service.
Managing unruly passengers: how airlines reduced air rage
Anecdotally, airlines and government agencies suggested a cluster of measures were effective: responsible service of alcohol, identifying and engaging groups of travellers, such as sports teams and previously disruptive passengers; in-flight warnings, employee training, observing passenger behaviour on the ground; passenger bans; use of restraint equipment; incident reports and watch lists.
Roundtable participants said putting in place responsible service of alcohol policies in terminals and on planes had cut the number of incidents on aircraft fuelled by drunkenness, although they also noted it was difficult to tell whether or not a passenger was drunk before they boarded, particularly with more people checking in online or at kiosks.
The AIC report said: “in the absence of breathalysers, even trained personnel are unlikely to accurately judge intoxication levels. At altitude, even passengers with low blood alcohol concentration levels can show impairment, making it harder for aircrew to determine their level of intoxication.
“Given aircrew may find it difficult to detect passenger intoxication, restricting passenger access to alcohol is perhaps the most effective means of reducing intoxication-related incidents.”
Airlines which let travellers use their personal electronic devices, such as tablets and smartphones in flight-mode during the flight reported a drop in incidents.
But passenger frustration bubbled to the service on those airlines that didn’t let people use their devices (because staff hadn’t completed safety requirements) and air rage rose as passengers disobeyed cabin crew.
Conclusions
The AIC report identified a much more co-ordinated, proactive approach from the Australian airline industry to manage unruly passengers but suggested developing a best practice framework to standardise how flight crew managed unruly passengers.
More research and information was also needed on: understanding catalysts for incidents; identifying a passengers’ behaviour, level of intoxication and demeanour before boarding; the nature of and response to incidents and how they’re triggered at rural and metro airports, develop incident resolution policy to provide consistency and direction for airlines, police and regulatory bodies.
The post Hen parties the new air rage scourge: Aussie airlines appeared first on Government News.
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