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whatcat
4th Jan 2013, 11:18
Not sure if this was the right way to handle it, but without air marshals and two hours into the flight, it's certainly effective Things Not to do on a Flight #27 – Grope Women and Choke Guys | Meeja (http://tinyurl.com/bzxpoen)

radeng
4th Jan 2013, 12:36
You can't tell from the picture if the gag covers mouth and nose. That's something to be very careful about - you can end up with a corpse. That happened with the Met police a few years back where they covered a woman's nose and mouth with tape and she suffocated. No prosecutions, of course.

t1grm
4th Jan 2013, 12:40
Given some of the stuff they are confiscating at the moment it begs the question who and how did they get that tape and the cable ties on the plane!

P.S. This has to be a spoof anyway :D

radeng
5th Jan 2013, 16:26
AP ran the story. Also San Diego Union Tribune

Icelandic airline restrains man on flight to NYC | UTSanDiego.com (http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jan/05/icelandic-airline-restrains-man-on-flight-to-nyc/?ap)

givemewings
5th Jan 2013, 18:08
I'm a bit skeptical of that photo, and if he were indeed trussed up like that I doubt any crew worth their training would have allowed him to be so for very long- almost anyone flying now knows that you are not permitted to gag a restrained passenger... at least not in any of the airlines I have flown for (reasons as given- to ensure integrity of the airway and so they can tell you if anything is wrong medically)

Or do they really do things differently in Europe?

750XL
5th Jan 2013, 18:12
Other sources claim that the passenger was spitting onto fellow passengers which could explain the tape over the mouth.

givemewings
5th Jan 2013, 18:17
I guess they have different rules then. In past airline training, it didn't matter what they were screaming we were not to cover their mouth. Period. If they were spitting or biting then restraining them to the seatback and moving other pax away was the only allowable option. Interesting that the airline will not confirm the picture, I wondered if it was a sppof or hoax when I first saw it without the story...

Di_Vosh
5th Jan 2013, 22:48
It's fairly obvious (to me) that the passenger has been secured by the cabin crew (no doubt with help from pax). Visible cable tie around the knees, hands secured behind his back (possibly more cable ties), ankles secured, and upper body secured to the seat both above and under the armpits. Can't see the seatbelt; may be hidden by his gut.

Pretty good effort, IMHO. Not sure what Iceland air has as part of their passenger restraint kits, but I'd not be at all suprised if there were cable ties and gaffer tape.

As for the gag...

My airline (Oz regional) doesn't permit gagging of passengers, and I doubt that many others do. Our rules state that the passenger should be restrained, supervised and other pax moved away from that passenger.

All well and good, but for two things. Firstly there may not be that many spare seats, leaving pax within spitting/abuse distance. But the biggie is the abuse that a drunk can deal out, non-stop, for hours, and the effect it may have on the rest of the passengers, and the cabin crew.

Very few people can ignore shouted abuse for very long before they're affected by it. Don't believe me? How many times have you or people around you get angry by the sound of a crying baby in the row behind? But a crying baby is nothing compared to continued, vindictive, directed abuse at various people, including you when it's your turn.

Drunks can keep this crap up for hours. IMHO, if a passenger continues a tirade of abuse to all and sundry, within 30 minutes some of the other passengers will become agitated. Within an hour or so some of them may want to do 'something about it'.

So the CC may have gagged the passenger for his own benefit.

Just my thoughts.

radeng
6th Jan 2013, 10:25
If the CC gagged him, one must assume that they kept checking the airway was clear....Awfully dodgy thing to do, though.

Load Toad
6th Jan 2013, 10:51
If the bloke gets drunk & makes other passengers journey miserable at best and potentially dangerous then he can take the risk with the restraints AND the gag. No body asked him to become a drunken ass.

AlpineSkier
6th Jan 2013, 12:23
I'm astonished that he was later released without charge, supposedly because none of the passengers wanted to make a complaint. Why wouldn't the airline make one ?

givemewings
6th Jan 2013, 14:02
It does seem strange. Especially given that in many countries, after being restrained like that and then not charged, one could presumably then turn around and claim deprivation of liberty.... (they DID land in the US of A after all) Must be more to the story...?

Which is why one must be absolutely sure of the circumstances and have captain's go-ahead to do something like this. *If* the pax took it upon themselves & intitiated a restraint (as it sort of sounds like by the descriptions given) then they could have opened a whole legal can of worms for sure

DaveReidUK
6th Jan 2013, 18:52
I suspect that, even in the litigious USA, the alleged miscreant would have been advised to quit while he was ahead. :)

radeng
7th Jan 2013, 10:10
Trouble is, Load Toad, that if the gagging leads to reaching the destination with a corpse, whoever did it is likely to be in deep sh*t!

Piltdown Man
8th Jan 2013, 23:04
..if the gagging leads to reaching the destination with a corpse..

"Honest guv, he tripped down the stairs."

radeng
9th Jan 2013, 09:26
But have they been trained by the Metropolitan Police so that they know that excuse?

t1grm
9th Jan 2013, 10:58
It's on the BBC now: BBC News - Who, What, Why: Is it legal to restrain air passengers? (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20940106)

Di_Vosh
9th Jan 2013, 11:54
Great article!

And in some cases, it's passengers themselves who adopt this approach.

In September 2012, passengers aboard a flight from Chicago to Orange County reportedly tackled and restrained a fellow traveller with their belts. A newspaper report said the man had been warned by the cabin crew but the passengers took it upon themselves to restrain him.


Like I said, sometimes you may have to restrain a passenger for his/her own safety from the other pax.

Hipennine
9th Jan 2013, 12:45
Look at the windows behind the gagged man. Which aircraft flys around at that pitch ?

t1grm
9th Jan 2013, 12:49
Look at the windows behind the gagged man. Which aircraft flys around at that pitch ?

That's the leading edge of the wing isn't it? Not the horizon.

DaveReidUK
9th Jan 2013, 15:22
Interesting article by the guy, Andy Ellwood, to whom the photo is attributed (but who in fact didn't take it);

Going Viral For Something You Didn't Do - Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/andyellwood/2013/01/07/going-viral-for-something-you-didnt-do/)

splinterniki
10th Jan 2013, 02:54
Drunk Icelandair passengers being taped to seat - YouTube (http://youtu.be/QjPARRz8z4U)
Moment moaning drunk engineer was taped to his seat on flight to New York after 'trying to choke woman and ranting about crash'

New video has emerged of the drunken trans-Atlantic airline passenger who was restrained with duct tape wailing like a bear with a sore head as he is strapped into his seat after going on a rampage at 40,000-feet last week.
The footage shows Gudmundur Karl Arthorsson, 46, being tied into his seat by flight attendants after he tried to choke and grope several passengers aboard the flight from Reykjavik to Kennedy Airport - at one stage yelling out that the plane was going down.
Filmed by a passenger on the flight, Icelandic citizen Arthorsson can be heard to wail incessantly after he reportedly consumed large amounts of Grand Marnier, whiskey and schnapps at a duty-free store before the flight, which arrived in New York at 6.30 p.m. on Thursday night.


Arthorsson, who is a civil engineer who works in Trinidad and Tobago had visited his family in the Icelandic capital but was returning home to be with his fiancée on the Caribbean island.
After police removed him from the flight he was taken to Jamaica Hospital where he was treated for alcohol poisoning and luckily for him, Federal authorities declined to prosecute the case.
It was while aboard the New York-bound flight that Arthorsson was duct-taped to his seat by fellow passengers after attacking one woman, spitting on other passengers and screaming the plane was going to crash.
A friend of one of the observing passengers, Andy Ellwood of New York, posted a picture of the subdued flyer to his Tumblr with an account of the incident.
The 'passenger drank all of his duty free liquor on the flight from Iceland to JFK yesterday,' Ellwood wrote.


'When he became unruly, (i.e. trying to choke the woman next to him and screaming the plane was going to crash), fellow passengers subdued him and tie him up for the rest of the flight. He was escorted off the flight by police when it landed.'
The photo was sent to Ellwood because he and his friend liked to trade 'travel war stories' he said.
His friend who observed the in-flight meltdown did not want to be identified or talk with the media.
Arthorsson was arrested upon landing at JFK on Thursday.
His tirade began after several hours in the air when there were about two hours left on the flight, reported Icelandic news outlet Mbl.is.

DaveReidUK
10th Jan 2013, 06:49
No airway problems here, he's still managing to swear through the duct tape :O

Drunk Icelandair passenger being taped to seat - YouTube

Note also the classic comment:

what if the plane crashed on a deserted island and he was the only survivor...taped to his seat?