Coming back to air rage on the ground, I have just seen this item on AOL News19/08 (12:18) CALMING COURSES' FOR AIRLINE STAFF
By Nell Raven, PA News
British Airways is to give its airport staff lessons on how to verbally calm aggressive customers after a rise in `ground rage' attacks, it emerged today.
Following a successful trial, a one day scheme called Managing Conflict is to be built into the training programmes of staff who deal directly with customers.
BA currently employs around 3,000 `customer facing' staff at Heathrow and 1,000 at Gatwick.
The course was piloted last year after the airline signed an agreement with unions to protect its ground staff from an increasing number of attacks.
A BA spokesman said: "This course is designed to give staff more inter-personal skills to diffuse abusive or threatening behaviour.
"It might apply in situations such as when staff have to prevent someone from boarding a flight.
"The one day course will be built into airport staff's training programme over the coming months.
"It came about as a result of our constant and ongoing review of staff working conditions.
"We aim to do everything we can to protect our staff and give them the means of coping with situations."
He added that the airline carried over 41 million passengers a year and the majority caused no trouble at all.
"But with that many people, even if just 1% are troublesome, it can cause an awful lot of problems."
A spokesman for the Manufacturing Science and Finance Union, which represents over 4,000 of BA's `customer facing' airport staff, said `ground rage' was on the increase.
He said: "Statistics compiled by BA, the British Airports Authority and ourselves all showed the problem was increasing.
"On the back of this, BA signed an agreement to provide conflict management training to staff."