Prevention of 'air rage' incidents is better than cure, according to IATA
David Learmount/LONDON
The problem of disruptive passengers is so complex that the world's airlines are struggling to agree on remedies. There is consensus on one thing, however - prevention is better than cure.
The International Air Transport Association's (IATA) working group on disruptive passengers has drawn up guidelines to deal with bad passenger behaviour in flight, and is working on advice to prevent such incidents.
The airlines' confusion is easy to understand. "Air rage", the popular label for the disruptive passenger phenomenon, implies physical violence and oversimplifies the issue. Each incident may have its particular risks and unpleasantness, but the matter is more likely to be resolved in court if an airline presses charges. Peter Reiss, of the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations, echoes the opinion of much of the industry by calling for airlines to set a standard of behaviour and be seen to enforce it. "Once a standard has been set, airlines will be respected and appreciated for enforcing it," he says.
Most "air rage" incidents, however, involve behaviour that causes considerable disruption, but falls short of physical violence, making it difficult for the airline to have recourse to the law as it stands.
For example, a group of happy but inebriated passengers singing and indulging in horseplay in the aisles may initially receive with good humour inevitable requests to be quiet and be seated. But they may not comply and the situation can escalate to a point where their behaviour becomes threatening without being violent.
Such an event took place recently on a UK-Florida flight, when the captain saw fit to divert to a US East Coast airport to have the problem travellers unloaded. In the captain's judgement, those passengers might have become a safety risk had the flight continued. However, a court might not have accepted that the diversion was necessary, because the burden of proof would have been the airline's. As it happened, the passengers paid a heavy penalty. They failed to reach their holiday destination and needed to book and pay for return flights to the UK on any airline that would accept them.
In a case at a UK court, involving drunken and unruly in-flight behaviour, the jury cleared two men of all charges brought, but the judge refused to award them legal costs, remarking that, through their behaviour, they had "brought the situation upon themselves". The IATA working group has recommended the use of publicity for airline action against bad passenger behaviour, but this could prove counter-productive if such action is regularly seen to fail.
One of IATA's main "first phase" study objectives was for airlines to work with airports, police and lawmakers towards a common procedure for handling disruptive passengers, and the association recommends "an airport-by-airport approach". But the only countries that will accept jurisdiction over events that take place on foreign-registered aircraft landing at their airports are Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Thailand, the UK and the USA, says IATA. If the offence is serious, then Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore will also take legal responsibility.
Dr Jerold Post, director of the political psychology programme at George Washington University in Washington DC, says that, although alcohol is not the cause of many "rage" incidents on airliners, it is a "facilitating factor" in releasing three underlying psychological traits - a feeling of entitlement, opposition to authority and fear of flying, that is rooted in a feeling of loss of control.
These traits can be found in people of all backgrounds, but one such characteristic may dominate, depending on the person's background, age or status. Someone who, at work, gives orders is just as likely to resent instructions from a young flight attendant as is a person of lower status, but who resents authority. Both situations contain the "recipe for confrontation", says Post.
IATA's guidelines make only oblique reference to passenger frustration. The Association advises staff to "ensure a smooth operation: diffuse the frustration that occurs over long waiting times, overbooking, lack of information and technical deficiencies". The guidelines are written as if these are inevitable components of modern air travel. The onus is put firmly on the staff to deal with the undesirable secondary effects of an imperfect system. There is a glaring absence of encouragement for the airlines to remove four powerful primary effects of air rage: airport queues, flight delay, lack of information and overbooking.
At IATA's 1997 annual general meeting, its director-general, Pierre Jeanniot, warned airlines that two crucial issues of public perception about air transport had to be dealt with before they got out of hand.
One issue was the failure to reduce the accident rate, which meant that accident numbers would grow in line with the industry's expansion, causing many passengers to fear and possibly reject air transport. The other was the failure to deal with passenger handling at airports and to recognise that the experience is no longer a pleasant one and is often tiring, boring, frustrating and highly stressful.
Airports came in for measured criticism at the UK Flight Safety Committee's international conference on disruptive passenger behaviour, held at London Heathrow Airport last November. For example, airports are the places where passengers - especially delayed ones - start getting drunk and buy bottles of duty-free liquor which, when opened on board, can negate crew attempts to limit alcohol intake. Various simple options were suggested at the conference, such as putting signs on airport bars warning that drunkenness on aircraft is against the law and may result in passengers being denied boarding, and converting customs authorities to the concept of duty-free sales on arrival.
Despite Jeanniot's clear intent, the IATA guidelines do not suggest a policy aimed at improving the airport experience for passengers, let alone improving the process of getting to the airport.
The efforts demanded of staff clearly constitute a request that they should do their best within the existing infrastructure.
Training - highly specialist, time-consuming and costly - is essential to prepare ground and air staff to deal with the situation. UK company Securicare offers "conflict management" training, tailored for cabin crew and concentrating on "de-escalation" techniques, with restraint training as a final resort. Skills taught include:
• understanding and coping with the effects of adrenalin;
• understanding challenging behaviour and how cabin crew should respond - this includes training in body language;
• awareness of the factors that affect people's behaviour;
• interpersonal and communication skills;
• action plan and emergency procedures.
AD Aerospace of Manchester, UK, which specialises in aviation closed-circuit television and video recording, suggests that if passengers know that their actions are being recorded, that knowledge would be a powerful deterrent to those who might misbehave.
But, as travellers on overcrowded, overbooked flights would testify, efforts to avoid passenger frustration and to meet their reasonable expectations or "entitlements" could eliminate the need for more dramatic anti-rage measures.
The causes of disruptive behaviour
IATA cites the following as the main causes of disruptive behaviour by passengers:
• excessive alcohol consumption;
• no-smoking policies: IATA says that smoking bans on long flights can produce stress-related, aggressive behaviour in smokers, who may react by attempting to smoke in lavatories. Sometimes smokers heighten behavioural risks by drinking too much alcohol in an attempt to compensate for nicotine withdrawal symptoms;
• seat allocation: not being allocated a preferred seat "often results in aggressive behaviour, which can be made worse if the passenger is under the influence of alcohol".
IATA says a significant proportion of problems have other causes that are not easily categorised and may include a combination of factors, such as personal issues, drugs or anxiety.
IATA guidelines
According to IATA's guidelines for policy creation on disruptive passenger behaviour, a series of events often builds up to a problem situation, and early warning signs can be spotted.
"The focus of company policy should be first on prevention by acting on these early signs," says IATA.
Dealing "firmly and legally" with disruptive behaviour is essential as a deterrent, it says. "But an airline cannot rely on its effect. In many disruptive incidents, passengers behave irrationally, and will not calculate the consequences of their behaviour," it adds. Recommended measures for prevention include:
• providing staff with written guidelines on how to deal with disruptive behaviour, especially in its early or symptomatic stages;
• ensuring a smooth operation: diffusing the frustration that occurs over long waiting times, overbooking, lack of information and technical deficiencies;
• training front-line staff to recognise early symptoms of potentially disruptive behaviour, ensuring that they have the required verbal skills. Make sure that they understand the need to pass on information about the passenger's state to those who have to deal with them next;
• maintaining and updating accurate reports and statistics about incidents, to be able to adjust training appropriately;
• using previous briefings for passengers where appropriate, especially for groups travelling together;
• using information cards in seat pockets;
• providing information about expected behaviour should be on the ticket/ receipt, co-located with Warsaw Convention information.
Source: Flight International
