Disruptive behaviour on board UK aircraft: April 2002-March 2003

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 2002 to March 2003. This note summarises the outcome. At Annex A is a table comparing key data over the last four years.

Change to Reporting Scheme

2. In order to minimise the burden on airlines and their crews, to focus attention on those incidents which pose actual or potential risks to crew and passengers, and to ensure consistency in reporting, from 1 June 2002 the Department asked airlines to report only those incidents which were likely to be categorised subsequently by the CAA as being "serious" or "significant". The omission of "other" incidents has resulted in a large reduction in the overall number of incidents reported in comparison to previous years.

3. Linked to this change were some minor changes in the criteria used by the CAA to classify "significant" incidents. The result of this is that a few types of incidents which may previously have been classified as "other" are now classified as "significant". This may account for the apparent increase in "significant" incidents and means that a comparison of the "significant" incidents with previous years may not be entirely accurate. However, the criteria for classifying "serious" incidents, which is entirely the responsibility of the CAA, did not change, and comparisons in this category are therefore valid.

Number of Incidents Recorded

4. A total of 648 serious and significant incidents were reported in the year to 31 March 2003. As explained above, whilst 1055 incidents were reported in the previous year, this figure contained a number of minor incidents which were not included in this year's analysis. 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 648 incidents reported, the CAA categorised some 613 as significant incidents and a further 35 were judged to be serious . This represents a decline by a third in the number of incidents judged to be serious, when compared with the previous 12 month period. The number of "significant" incidents increased by 16%, but as explained in paragraph 3, some or all of this may be accounted for by changes in the way incidents are classified.

5. Over the 12 months to 31 March 2003 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.

6. These figures continue to show that "air rage" is not a widespread phenomenon, and that 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.

The Offenders

7. Some 74% of all incidents involved male passengers, similar to last year. The majority of offenders were in their 30s, or 40s and about a quarter of incidents involved people travelling alone. Whereas last year 21 incidents involved groups of 10 or more, this year only 9 incidents involved large groups of disruptive passengers. About 4% of incidents occurred in business or first class seating, in common with previous years.

The Offences

8. 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.

9. 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. The number of violent incidents continued the downward trend from previous years.

10. As in the previous year, the 35 incidents categorised by the CAA as being serious included several in which passengers were acting extremely irrationally and strongly suspected of being, or known to be, 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

11. 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 28% of cases, and ineffective in 30% of cases (in the remainder, the degree of effectiveness of the warning was not reported).

12. In 6 incidents a passenger had to be physically restrained by handcuffs and/or a strap (compared to 16 in 2001/2002), and in a further 7 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 5 occasions on which the aircraft had to divert when in the air (similar to the previous year) and 2 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. There were 132 incidents reported where passengers were offloaded (either after boarding, after pushback or at a stopover).

13. 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 191 incidents involving disruptive behaviour on-board UK aircraft during the 12 months to 31 March 2003 (very similar to the previous year).

The Contributory Factors

14. Excessive consumption of alcohol and smoking were once again the two main contributory factors to disruptive behaviour. Alcohol was identified or suspected as being a contributory cause in 42% of all incidents. Around 32% of the alcohol related incidents involved passengers drinking their own alcohol and 45% involved passengers drinking alcohol before boarding. The data confirms that drinking prior to boarding often has a knock-on effect on behaviour on the aircraft.

15. Smoking, or the desire to smoke, featured in 260 incidents (40% of the total). 85% of these incidents involved smoking in the toilets. The latter category of offence implies a degree of premeditated deception, and poses greater safety risks to the aircraft should a carelessly discarded cigarette result in a fire.

The Context

16. 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.

17. During the 12-month period covered by the data, UK airlines operated about 1.2 million passenger flights and carried about 118 million passengers. In this period only 35 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 36,000, and that only 1 in every 3 million passengers was the cause of a serious disruptive incident. Even extending the calculation to cover all reported incidents, the figures would rise only to 1 in 1,851 and 1 in 182,099 ¹ respectively. However, the risks to which individual airline employees may be exposed are substantially greater than those facing passengers.

Department for Transport, June 2003

Annex A

Comparison of key data over 4 years

	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03
Total incident reports	1205	1250	1055	648 2
Severity
Serious	74	63	52	35
Significant	519	595	528	613 3
Other	612	652	475	-
Context
Number of flights per serious incident	15,000	17,000	22,000	36,000
Number of passengers carried per serious incident	1.3 million	1.7 million	2 million	3 million
Incident details
Violence involved	157	139	101	90
Violence towards crew	83	71	49	48
Contributory factors
Alcohol involved	607 (50%)	533 (43%)	472 (45%)	271 (42%)
Alcohol - pre-boarding	66 4	198	198	121
Alcohol - airline	234	165	92	63
Alcohol - own	283	214	182	88
Smoking involved	449 (37%)	408 (33%)	385 (36%)	260 (40%)
Smoking in toilet	240	350	306	221

¹ some incidents involved more than one culprit

² From June 2002 airlines were asked to report only incidents which were likely to be classed as serious or significant.

³ The rise in ‘significant’ incidents may be accounted for by a change in the classification of certain types of incidents.

⁴ Not included as a specific category on the reporting form until April 2000.