Disruptive behaviour on board UK aircraft: April 2001-March 2002

Background

1. At the request of the Department for 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 2001 to March 2002. This note summarises the outcome. At Annex A is a table comparing key data over the last three years.

2. Overall the number of reported incidents of disruptive passenger behaviour fell by 15% compared to the previous year. Although some of this may be accounted for by the decrease in passenger numbers following 11 September 2001, the decrease in reported incidents since September was much greater than the fall in passenger numbers. The pattern of incidents reported was very similar to the corresponding data 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 1055 incidents were reported in the year to 31 March 2002, a decrease from 1250 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 1055 incidents reported, the CAA categorised some 528 (50%) as significant incidents and a further 52 (5%) were judged to be serious. This represents a slight increase in the percentage of incidents judged to be significant, with the percentage of serious incidents remaining the same, when compared with the previous 12 month period.

4. Over the 12 months to 31 March 2002 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 77% of all incidents involved male passengers (a figure which has remained almost constant over the last three years). The majority of offenders were in their 20s, 30s, or 40s and about a third of incidents involved people travelling alone. Worthy of specific mention is that 21 incidents involved groups of 10 or more. About 5% of incidents occurred in business or first class seating, in common with previous years.

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 quarter 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 about 10% of all incidents (compared to 11% during the previous year).

8. The 52 incidents categorised by the CAA as being serious included several in which passengers were acting extremely irrationally and strongly suspected of being under the influence of drugs. Many involved excessive consumption of alcohol. 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.

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 44% of cases, and ineffective in 35% of cases.

10. In 16 incidents a passenger had to be physically restrained by handcuffs and/or a strap (compared to 18 in 2000/2001), and in a further 9 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 6 occasions on which the aircraft had to divert when in the air (compared to 13 in 2000/2001) and 3 when the aircraft was forced to discontinue taxi or take-off procedures and return to its stand. The reporting procedure covered the time from embarkation to disembarkation, and in total there were 155 incidents where passengers were either refused boarding (usually because of drunkenness) or entered the aircraft but were subsequently disembarked. This is up from 141 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 196 incidents involving disruptive behaviour on-board UK aircraft during the 12 months to 31 March 2002.

The Contributory Factors

12. As might be expected, alcohol and tobacco were once again the two main contributory factors to disruptive behaviour. Alcohol was identified or suspected as being a contributory cause in 45% of all incidents, compared to 43% during the previous 12 months. As in the previous year, around 40% of the alcohol related incidents involved passengers drinking their own alcohol, and 42% involved passengers drinking alcohol before boarding (as compared with 37% the previous year). 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 385 incidents (36% of the total, compared to 33% in 2000/2001). 79% of these incidents (compared to 86% in 2000/2001) involved smoking in the toilets. The latter category of offence implies a degree of premeditated deception, and poses greater safety risks to the aircraft.

The Context

14. 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.

15. During the 12-month period covered by the data, UK airlines operated about 1.1 million passenger flights and carried about 104 million passengers (both similar to the previous year). In this period only 52 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 22,000, and that only 1 in every 2 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 1105 and 1 in 98,715 respectively. However, the risks to which individual airline employees may be exposed are substantially greater than those facing passengers.

Department for Transport
June 2002

Annex A

	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02
Total incident reports	1205	1250	1055
Severity
Serious	74 (6%)	63 (5%)	52 (5%)
Significant	519 (43%)	595 (48%)	528 (50%)
Other	612 (51%)	652 (47%)	475 (45%)
Context
Number of flights per serious incident	15,000	17,000	22,000
Number of passengers carried per serious incident	1.3 million	1.7 million	2 million
Incident details
Violence involved	157 (13%)	139 (11%)	101 (10%)
Violence towards crew	83	71	49
Contributory factors
Alcohol involved	607 (50%)	533 (43%)	472 (45%)
Alcohol pre-boarding	66	198	198
Alcohol airline	234	165	92
Alcohol own		283	214
Smoking involved	449 (37%)	408 (33%)	385 (36%)
Smoking in toilet	240	350	306