Air Rage Case Study

1 INTRODUCTION

In the past few years terms of "unruly" or "disruptive passengers" and "air rage" enriched the agendas of ICAO, IATA, airlines and national authorities. During that time the problem of unruly behaviour on board an aircraft has become a major concern for aviation in general and airlines in particular. Incidents range from general disobedience to cabin crew trying to enforce key regulations affecting on board safety to offensive behaviour, threatening, sexual harassment and the most violent physical aggression towards other passengers, crew members and even pilots. In 1998, Peter Reiss spoke of an approximate four-fold increase of such incidents within the past three years.

According to a survey by the International Air Transport

However, this is pure speculation because there are no firm statistics on the problem. "There is no unified system in the industry for collecting information on these incidents. In fact, we do not know unequivocally that the number of passenger interference events is rising, but anecdotal evidence and statistics kept by some air carriers gives strong credence to that belief. Based on an analysis of reporting airlines, as well as a look at the number of recent occurrences reported, it is clear that air rage is occurring around the world, not just within the United States. The stories about air rage are never ending. The media gives it much attention. However, it is difficult to reveal how extensive air rage is because of conflicting reports from the airlines and from flight crew who actually deal with the disruptive

If, however, the numbers of incidents are put in relation to the total number of passengers travelling every year, the percentage seems negligible. Unruly passengers represent about 0.000006 - 0.000018 per cent of the annual passenger load.25 As a resu1t, the number of incidents involving unruly passenger in aircraft are the lowest of any public space.26 An airplane is safer than any other public space, even churches, places of employment and certainly the sidewalk. But although these numbers seem to be minimal, the problem is a major one. The importance of the problem can therefore not rest upon statistics, but has to stem from something else. Because of its nature, aviation is extremely sensitive to any disruption. It is the crew who mainly guarantees the aircraft flight safety. Interfering with the crew's duties by unruly behaviour can therefore cause serious disturbance in the operation of the