Flight,interrupted

ICAO (the International Civil Aviation Organization, which is a UN agency) defines a disruptive passenger as one who “fails to respect the rules of conduct at an airport or on board an aircraft or to follow the instructions of theairport staff or crew members and thereby disturbs the good order and discipline at an airport or on board the aircraft. ” Within this fairly wide remit, IATA (a trade body made up of the world’s airlines) outlines eight common types of behaviour within its STEADES (Safety Trend Evaluation, Analysis and Data Exchange System) database: 1.

illegal consumption of narcotics or cigarettes 2.

refusal to comply with safety instructions 3.

verbal confrontation with crew members or other passengers 4.

physical confrontation with crew members or other passengers 5.

passengers who interfere with crew duties or refuse to follow instructions to leave the aircraft 6.

making threats that could affect the safety of the crew, passengers and aircraft 7.

sexual abuse or harassment 8.

other types of riotous behaviour that could jeopardise the safety of or alter good order and discipline on board the aircraft.

(Within the database, riotous behaviour might include screaming, kicking seatbacks, or other verbal/physical incidents not directed at a crew member or passenger. ) The potential consequences of disruptive passengers are extensive and can be significant. Crew and passengers can be injured and traumatised by the disruptive passenger or the incident as a whole. Crew might be distracted from vital safety duties. Aircraft might be diverted or delayed, which could cause flightdeck or cabin crew to time out and be unable to continue the flight without a mandated rest period, which would compound the delay. Fire is a very real risk in lavatory smoking incidents, magnified if a previous illicit smoker has tampered with the smoke detector. Removed or broken security seals resulting from interference can require additional security screening and cause delays.

But what causes passengers to become disruptive? Why would disruptions increase by 57 per cent in just one year from 2012 to 2013? And what, if anything, can airlines do about it?

Drink probably isn’t the devil

Notably, IATA’s STEADES data does not specifically break out alcohol-related issues. Anecdotally, these issues are on the rise, yet the majority of airlines are reluctant to declare booze a problem. And, indeed, it is fair to say that most passengers who enjoy a quiet tipple to relax after a long day’s work or to celebrate the start of a holiday do not become disruptive, and value the chance to have a drink.

Yet there are exceptions, both to the route-wide cost-benefit analysis and to the majority of peaceful drinkers.

Jetstar’s well-known yet little-publicised prohibition of duty free sales on board flights to and from Bali extends not just to onboard offerings but to the airport as well. Try to buy a bottle of booze in Denpasar and you will be politely refused if you hand over a boarding pass with JQ on it. The cost of not selling alcohol is clearly not great enough to overcome the benefit of avoiding disruprive incidents.

Virgin Australia is likely to be eyeing Jetstar’s Bali booze ban following April’s “hijack scare” on board VS41, where a Denpasar-bound passenger (reportedly intoxicated with, according to various sources, one or more of alcohol, prescription drugs and non-prescription medication) attempted to gain access to the cockpit. While the precise details of the incident are related differently by the passenger, airline, airport staffers and Indonesian officials, the fact remains that the marginal benefit of quietly removing alcohol from the mix may well outweigh the marginal cost to revenues from duty free sales.

Emirates crew talk relatively freely at the upstairs premium cabin bar on the airline’s A380s about many subjects, including that there have been instances where a rowdy atmosphere (not, hopefully, IATA’s “riotous” definition) has led to the bar being shut down on some UK flights.

Virgin Atlantic gets in early in terms of notifications, with crew reading out a standard warning that, paraphrased, it is an offence to be drunk on an aircraft, and that they may deny alcohol service based on consumption and not just on behaviour. (Not that the passenger served his sixth gin and tonic on a seven-hour flight in the carrier’s Upper Class late last year seemed to be cut off, mind. ) At the end of the day, airlines are businesses and are (usually) driven by commercial considerations. Whether it’s to maximise duty free sales, attract passengers up front with premium labels, or to pacify people down the back with a glass of plonk, it seems that most airlines do not consider an outright ban on alcohol to swing the cost-benefit analysis on most routes.

Pre-loading pre-boarding is an issue

While regulations generally prohibit an intoxicated passenger from boarding an aircraft, it is remarkably rare that a passenger is actually denied boarding as a result. Comparing the numbers of alcohol-related denied boardings to disruptive passenger incidents year on year could potentially reveal a key issue: the problem, caused by “pre-loading” alcohol before a flight, is created by airport bars, yet it is airlines who are affected. But the airlines could hold a key to solving it. Within the airport, a passenger is identified at various points in their journey by their boarding pass, and their PNR (passenger name record) in particular. Passengers are used to having their boarding pass scanned by duty free shops for various reasons, including ensuring eligibility for certain goods and capturing marketing data. At the same time, airports like London Heathrow are already using the PNR within a computerised system in order to ensure that a passenger has enough time to get to their gate, with barriers at various points along their way through the terminal.

Surely a similar system could be applied to the service of alcohol within the airport terminal. If a passenger had to scan their boarding pass when served a drink, bartenders could receive notifications of the number of drinks a passenger had consumed and the length of time before their flight. A system could even implement a minimum period of time between drinks, a “last orders” time period before a flight, a maximum drinks per hour, maximum drinks per flight, and other restrictions. And data-driven restrictions could even be based on carrier-wide policies, routes known to have had previous alcohol disruptions, and any prior issues with a certain passenger.

Airport bars and airport bartenders have a duty to serve alcohol responsibly, yet there is a double disconnect in service between the airport bartenders, gate agents (who may even be replaced by automated gates) and cabin crew, who may be the first airline staffer to discover an inebriated passenger – nearly too late to do anything about it without making a scene.

An increasing willingness to report may be part of an increasingly stressful picture Alcohol has been served on board and in airports for more than half a century, and during decades when heavier drinking was more socially acceptable than it is today. So why the spike in disruptive incidents? In the 2000s and 2010s, airlines have tended to require more of their flight attendants in particular. Among other issues, labour relations have been strained, turnover has increased, workloads have grown, new sub-fleet crew cadres have been created, and rest periods have been reduced.

While none of those issues is in itself a factor, each could well contribute to disruptive behaviour becoming less tolerated and more frequently reported.

Recommendations to document incidents that might previously have gone undocumented were made, and existing crews may have reached a position that could be summed up as “I’m not paid enough to deal with this nonsense”.

With new staff members and sub-fleet crew cadres come new norms and mores, often with anotably different generational or even cultural makeup. Less experienced crews may be more willing to object, or less willing to put up with situations that more experienced crews would have ignored or swept under the carpet. Less experienced crews may also have less training in defusing situations at an earlier stage, leading to escalations.

More recent training may also focus crew minds on identifying and dealing with disruptive passenger incidents formally rather than informally. And shorter rest periods may result in crews less patient in dealing with issues.

The decline in passenger experience puts flyers on edge

While crews may be more willing to report issues (or less able to deal with them), it could also be that economy passengers – who of course make up the vast majority of travellers – are increasingly uncomfortable in ever smaller seats, leading to a general rise in tension across the cabin.

Airlines are reducing pitch, and despite the positive advances made in carving out knee room and removing other obstructions from seats, the distance from a passenger’s head to the back of the seat in front is continually decreasing. Thus, on most carriers, seats are reclining further into our space than ever before – not because we gain any further sense of recline as we slide backwards, but because there is less distance between rows.

The ethically questionable Knee Defender, a small piece of plastic designed to temporarily jam the recline mechanism of the seat in front, is a physical manifestation of the frustration that many passengers feel. The device, which comes with a “courtesy card” that is anything but, can only inflame tensions in the cabin.

Efforts to reduce the recline problem have focused largely on seats that slide forward to incline the base of the seat instead of pivoting backwards, but these are widely unpopular among the majority of passengers. Cathay Pacific introduced these seats on its long-haul fleet and was forced to backtrack after general opprobrium shortly afterwards.

Yet the forward sliding seats may still find a niche – Cathay’s regional aircraft and Dragonair subsidiary will inherit them. Passengers are likely to object less (and may even appreciate the increase in head-to-video-screen distance) on flights of just a few hours rather than ultra long-haul services.

Economy passengers are increasingly uncomfortable in ever smaller seats.

Some airlines have decided on “pre-reclined” seats (probably the best aviation euphemism since an airline last “enhanced” a frequent flyer program), and not just the usual suspects like Ryanair. US low-cost carrier Allegiant has even “pre-reclined” the seats it sells as a business-lite option on its Boeing 757-200 aircraft.

In addition to the decline in personal space, shared facilities are also getting the chop in the quest to monetise every inch of the cabin. Airlines are installing fewer lavatories per passenger and shrinking existing ones, even in premium classes where the passenger to lavatory ratio is more favourable. If passengers are woken late on red-eye flights and have to queue for the lavatory before landing, it’s not a huge leap of logic to suggest that tired, half-awake travellers desperate for the loo are not best conducive to “good order and discipline” within the cabin.

Matt Lockley, the passenger involved in the VA41 Bali hijack scare incident, claims he confused the flightdeck door for a lavatory. Whatever the reasons for Lockley’s confusion, or substances that may or may not have amplified it, inflight doors can look alike to bleary-eyed passengers, and the two are similarly sized, right next to each other.

It’s not just lavatories: aisles are getting smaller too. The loss of an inch of seat width when a Boeing 777 is converted from a nine-abreast to ten-abreast economy configuration, or when a Boeing 787 is selected with nine seats per row rather than eight, is bad enough just in terms of the seat. But the 17in for the extra seat has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is all too often the aisles, some of which are now too narrow to be able to roll a standard carry-on bag down.

If aisle passengers are disrupted every time a fellow flyer or crewmember walks down the aisle and brushes their shoulder in passing, airlines selecting these ultra-cramped configurations cannot avoid their share of the responsibility for sleep deprivation, sheer frustration and potentially even injury contributing to disruption incidents.

While the reality of airline economics quite rightly makes space-saving a priority, the question is whether airlines are including all the factors contributing to passengers becoming disruptive in their calculations, or whether they are externalising them under the headings of “crew” and “passengers”.

When glamour goes too far

Sexual harassment is an increasingly reported problem for cabin crew, and airline decisions are contributing to an atmosphere of acceptance and even encouragement of a sexualised atmosphere.

The “coffee, tea or me” advertisements and sexist cabin crew appearance requirements of the past are officially consigned to the anachronistic history bins they deserve, yet attitudes prevail among passengers – and, unfortunately, among airline executives.

More than one in four Hong Kong- based flight attendants reported being sexually harassed in the 12 months covered in a February 2014 study by the territory’s Equal Opportunities Commission. In May, the Flight Attendants Union representing Cathay Pacific crews reported flight attendants experiencing harassment on one in every ten flights, and cited skirts designed to fit tightly and low-riding blouses as a contributing factor.

Cabin crew on Korean airline Asiana only won the right to swap their uniform skirts for trousers in2013, and then only after a ruling by South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission following a complaint by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. Many feel unable to do so because of unspoken pressure from their airline.

Closer to home, Virgin Australia’s 2011 uniform revamp included an option of signature red cabin crew dresses with hemlines at mid thigh. Other options were and are available, yet the airline’s extensive advertisements focused and continue to capitalise on the image of young, conventionally attractive female flight attendants, all of whom are wearing the little red dress. The now-iconic 2012 “S’Wonderful” ad with crew seemingly striding across Western Australia salt plains doesn’t highlight a single female flight attendant in anything else.

Bringing back the glamour of the jet age is all very well and good, but bringing back the entitlement and misogynist attitudes of the 1960s is not. Airlines need to take responsibility for the way their brand positioning communicates the role of their staff.

In 2013, Singapore Airlines edged away from the at-your-service presentation of its iconic flight attendants (tagline: “Singapore Girl, you’re a great way to fly”), moving instead to a series of ads presenting the Singapore Girl as a knowledgeable connoisseur researching the best movies, tea, seating and other elements of the passenger experience. Less sexy, more savvy.

Sexual harassment doesn’t just affect flight attendants

Air New Zealand’s current safety video drew criticism on its release for strongly sexualising airline safety using a bevy of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models in skimpy bikinis.

The airline’s longstanding tactic of creating videos that go viral on social media is one thing – as annoying as they can be (as any passenger who sat through multiple flights with the shrieking and leaping American 1980s keep-fit superstar Richard Simmons will attest) – using safety videos as marketing is smart.

But (as that Richard Simmons-loathing flyer will attest) the line comes when it’s presented on board. It’s actually irrelevant to the social media virality of the ads whether they appear on flight 101 to Sydney. But in showing them on board, the airline has created a sexualised atmosphere that’s viscerally unpleasant for real women travellers and staff.

As Air NZ flyer Cate Owen recounted on Twitter in May: “Two passengers got into a fight over which bikini-clad safety briefing

Airlines need to take responsibility for the way their brand positioning communicates the role of their staff.

model they wanted to [have sex with], and a woman near them asked to be moved. ” Airlines have to take responsibility for the behaviour that their decisions drive. This kind of incident was predictable – and, indeed, was actually predicted.

The disruptive passenger landscape has changed

Even before September 11, the modality of dealing with disruptive passengers was starting to change from “probably drunk” to “possible terrorist”.

Flight attendants have been given new tools and new ways of dealing with potential danger in the cabin. And, as security expert Bruce Schneier explains: “Only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers. ” Untrained passengers can overreact, though. In 2000, a Southwest Airlines passenger died of asphyxiation after being restrained by other passengers after trying to storm the door of a Boeing 737 in an apparent air rage incident.

A decade and a half later, the first- ever IATA Cabin Safety Conference in May 2014 reported that some airlines still lacked training for cabin crew in physical restraint or the plastic tools which they use to restrain passengers. A well-publicised 2013 incident aboard an Icelandair flight resulted in a disruptive passenger being tied at the knees and hands, duct-taped to a seat with his mouth taped closed.

In some ways, and in some parts of the world, flight attendants have become more attuned to (and more willing to respond to) issues of disruption.

At the same time, the proliferation of mobile phones and other portable devices capable of recording video mean that incidents are publicised within minutes of reaching a mobile phone signal. Alec Baldwin’s infamous refusal to turn off his Kindle while playing the Scrabble-esque online game Words with Friends in 2011 was widely reported.

But even while Baldwin is to be condemned for the way that he reacted, part of his logic wasn’t unreasonable to many passengers. What flyers view as pointless inconvenience or rules for the sake of rules – the requirement for all personal electronic devices to be turned off for takeoff and landing – may translate into a wider perception of other inflight rules, regulation and instructions being without merit.

The 2014 relaxation of rules on personal electronic devices may well be the single most influential change in the disruptive passenger landscape. It will be interesting to see how the airline-reported numbers of disruptions change at the IATA airline industry cabin safety conference next year.

Whatever the reasons for the rise in disruptive passengers, it is the airlines that are most affected by this problem. It is a positive step to see the airlines starting to take responsibility for solving it.