IATA has reported a decrease in incidents caused by disruptive passengers worldwide, despite a perception that numbers are on the increase. The issue arose during a press briefing at IATA congress in Rio de Janeiro.
Wilie Walsh shared: This year we’ve seen a slight decline in the number of incidents from disruptive passengers compared to last year. Obviously any incident is unacceptable and airlines are very clear that we will not tolerate these sort of behaviours and you’ve seen more and more airlines take very strong action against anybody who disrupts flights including pursuing people for costs associated with any diversions.
So it’s unacceptable that we have any disruption on board an aircraft. Clearly it has a big impact on our operations but I am pleased to say that we’ve actually seen a decline. Now whether that’s because of publicity around what airlines are doing or whether it’s just that the environment has changed I’m unclear at this stage. But any interference with the safe operation of the aircraft is clearly unacceptable and I think airlines are taking all of the appropriate measures to ensure that where they face this disruption they take hard action against the people who cause it.
Roberto Alvo shared: I’d like to just add because unlike the average of the world where this is coming down, in South America in particular it is going up and it’s going up very sharply and this is a function of probably not having the adequate regulation and the consequences to people that disrupt the operations of airlines. And unfortunately the regulation in our countries is absent in many places of this and as an industry we must be working together to bring this as an important topic because it’s not about the passenger that has disrupted the operations but about the hundreds of passengers that actually get affected because of the situation.
