When passengers attack

Mumbai: Had the Indigo `hijack' - where three passengers spread panic on board a Goa-Delhi flight - occurred in the US or any of the European countries, the trio would have faced a life-long ban by all the airlines of the concerned country, and would have been relegated to rail travel. In India, the rules are more benevolent.
"In most countries, airlines have a practice of maintaining a shared database of unruly passengers. Once a passenger is blacklisted, he or she is banned by all the airlines of the country concerned. Such strict punishment is meted out to even unruly passengers. The IndiGo passengers did much more than that,'' said Capt R S Otaal, general secretary of Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA).
"Safety, hospitality and service is all up there, but security is one aspect that is ignored,'' said a senior cabin crew-member of a leading airline. "We were shown films made by Lufthansa and British Caledonian on how to control an unruly passenger. It showed an attendant pushing the passenger on the floor, and cuffing him. But we cannot do that as restraining devices like plastic hand-cuffs are not kept on board Indian planes, even though the DGCA manual says otherwise,'' he said.
"In a hijack situation, we can communicate with the captain through certain code words inform him of the situation,'' said a Jet Airways attendant. Most airlines have the provision of flying sky-marshals who are specially equipped to deal with terror situations, but their presence is rare and random.
According to the law, a passenger should be verbally warned twice. If the passenger still refuses to behave, the cabin crew reads out the United Nations Tokyo Convention, 1963, of which India is a signatory - that looks into acts that may jeopardise the safety of the aircraft, and hand-cuffs him or her. An aviation source added, "The commander is held responsible for the safety of the aircraft, so under article 9, he can hand the concerned passenger to the authorities.'' The rules give complete and absolute right to the commander to decide the seriousness of the offence, but these powers are seldom exercised by the commanders in India.
03/02/09 Manju V & Chinmayi Shalya/Times of India

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Categories: Safety Feb 2009