Disruptive behaviour on board UK aircraft: April 2000-March 2001
Background
1. At the request of the Department of Transport UK airlines have since April 1999 reported incidents of disruptive behaviour on board their aircraft to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), on a common reporting basis. The CAA has now analysed the data submitted for the year April 2000 to March 2001. This note summarises the outcome.
2. The frequency and pattern of incidents reported were very similar to the corresponding figures for the previous year. Such significant differences as there were are identified in this note. The figures confirm that "air rage" is not a widespread phenomenon, and the probability of any individual passenger being affected by an incident of disruptive behaviour is extremely low. However there remains a low level of anti-social behaviour, which on occasions escalates into serious incidents which could pose a threat to the safety of the aircraft and/or its occupants. The Department is also conscious that airline employees working on board aircraft are more at risk of harm than the average passenger by virtue of flying more frequently and the nature of their responsibilities.
Number of Incidents Recorded
3. A total of 1250 incidents were reported in the year to 31 March 2001, a slight increase from 1205 incidents during the previous 12 month period. As before the incidents reported ranged from relatively minor infringements, such as arguing with other passengers or over-forcefully expressing dissatisfaction with service, to serious misbehaviour. The CAA classified incidents according to their actual or potential threat to flight and personal safety, taking into account consequences such as aircraft diversions. Of the 1250 incidents reported, the CAA categorised some 595 as significant incidents and a further 63 were judged to be serious. This represents a slight increase in the number of incidents judged to be significant, and a slight decrease in the number of serious incidents, when compared with the previous 12 month period.
4. Over the 12-months to 31 March 2001 no case was reported in which disruptive behaviour by a passenger or passengers contributed to an aviation accident, although there were a number of incidents where the description of events referred to violence against cabin crew.
The Offenders
5. Some 78% of all incidents involved male passengers. As in the previous year, about two-thirds of offenders were in their 20s or 30s, and about a third of incidents involved people travelling alone. About 5% of incidents occurred in business or first class seating.
The Offences
6. The majority of cases reported could be described as general disruptiveness, with verbal abuse either to cabin crew or other passengers occurring in 44% of cases. About a third of all cases involved disobeying airline staff. Dissatisfaction with the level of service and smoking restrictions were common triggers for unruly or aggressive behaviour, while arguments between passengers often stemmed from domestic disputes, arguments over allocation of seats, or the effect of reclining a seat on the person behind.
7. Among the incidents categorised as significant, by far the most common misbehaviour remained smoking in the aircraft's toilet. There were also several cases of aggressive or abusive behaviour; of repeated refusal to follow instructions - often regarding the use of seat belts; of intoxication; and of passengers exhibiting signs of personality disorder. Violence was involved in 11% of all incidents (down from 13% during the previous year).
8. As in the previous year, the 63 incidents categorised by the CAA as being serious included several in which passengers smoking in the toilet had either started a fire or had disconnected the smoke detector. Nearly all the remainder involved varying degrees of violent, abusive or unacceptable behaviour, on a few occasions including damage to the interior of the aircraft. In the majority of these incidents there was some evidence of alcohol abuse, drug abuse or personality disorder.
The Consequences
9. In the majority of incidents a warning of some sort was given to the offending passenger, and the evidence from the reports suggests that the warning was effective in about two-thirds of cases.
10. In 18 incidents a passenger had to be physically restrained by handcuffs and/or a strap (compared to 13 in 1999/2000), and in a further 10 incidents other forms of restraint were used, such as having a cabin crew member or other passenger sit next to the disruptive passenger for the remainder of the flight. There were 13 occasions on which the aircraft had to divert when in the air (compared to 8 in 1999/2000) and 5 when the aircraft was forced to discontinue take-off procedures and return to its stand. The reporting procedure covered the time from embarkation to disembarkation, and in total there were 141 incidents where passengers were either refused boarding (usually because of drunkenness) or entered the aircraft but were subsequently disembarked. This is down from 173 incidents during the previous year.
11. Since cabin crew would not necessarily know at the time of reporting an incident whether further action was taken, there are no reliable figures on how many incidents led to arrest or other police action. However, police or security attended 210 incidents involving disruptive behaviour on-board UK aircraft during the 12 months to 31 March 2001.
The Contributory Factors
12. As might be expected, alcohol and tobacco were once again the two main contributory factors to disruptive behaviour. In 533 incidents (i.e. around 43% of the total), alcohol was identified or suspected as being a contributory cause. This figure is a decrease on the 607 alcohol-related incidents during the previous 12 months, but may be an under-estimate if cabin crew reported only primary causes. Around 40% of these incidents involved passengers drinking their own alcohol rather than alcohol served by the airline. The data confirms that drinking prior to boarding often has a knock-on effect on behaviour on the aircraft.
13. Smoking, or the desire to smoke, featured in 408 incidents (33% of the total, compared to 37% in 1999/2000), of which 350 (28%, compared to 20% in 1999/2000) involved smoking in the toilets. The latter category of offence implies a degree of premeditated deception, and poses greater safety risks to the aircraft.
14. As indicated earlier, smoking in the toilet and/or drunkenness were contributory factors in the majority of the serious incidents.
The Context
15. The number of recorded incidents must be seen in the context of the number of flights operated by UK carriers, and the number of passengers carried.
16. During the 12-month period covered by the data, UK airlines operated about 1.1 million passenger flights, and carried about 104 million passengers. In this period only 63 serious incidents were recorded. This means that the chance of an individual passenger boarding a flight on which a serious incident took place was around 1 in 17,000, and that only around 1 in every 1.7 million passengers was the cause of a serious disruptive incident. Even extending the calculation to cover all reported incidents (and these included some very minor altercations), the figures would rise only to 1 in 880 and 1 in 83,200[1] respectively. However, the risks to which individual airline employees may be exposed are substantially greater than those facing passengers.
