BA to Ban Rude Pax From Boarding
From The Times:
SATURDAY MAY 26 2001
BA to ban ground-rage passengers
BY BEN WEBSTER, TRANSPORT CORRESPONDENT
PASSENGERS who are rude to airport check-in staff face being banned from flights under new guidelines being introduced by British Airways.
The airline has rewritten its conditions of carriage to warn travellers that they will be prevented from boarding if they use “threatening, abusive or insulting words to ground staff or the crew”.
Airports will be extremely busy this weekend as more than 1.25 million people fly to foreign resorts, but the conditions of carriage are not being amended until next month.
Check-in staff say that they are facing increasing torrents of abuse from frustrated and aggressive passengers. They believe too much attention has been given to so-called air rage on board planes.
“We have been telling the airlines for some time that you can spot passengers who are likely to commit air rage from their behaviour at check-in,” said George Ryde, head of aviation at the Transport and General Workers Union.
“Full credit to BA that they are the first to make this change to prevent disruptive passengers from even getting on board.”
BA logged 232 cases of air rage on board aircraft last year but does not collect figures for incidents on the ground. Now it has become the first airline in Britain to amend the terms and conditions of its contract with the passenger to make clear that it will not tolerate rudeness.
“If we think someone is going to be a disruptive passenger the most obvious thing to do is to deny them boarding,” said Owen Highley, a BA solicitor who helped to draw up the new contract.
“But there has to be common sense. We are not going to ban from flight everybody who gets a bit stroppy.”
Mr Highley said the new conditions of carriage had been written in simple terms to ensure that passengers were not confused by corporate language. The contract clarifies what BA means by check-in deadlines in order to end the confusion which often leads to angry confrontations when passengers are told that their flight is closed.
It says: “The test is whether they have received their boarding pass for the flight, not whether they have joined the check-in queue.”
Passengers barred from boarding would not be refunded their ticket price unless it was a fully flexible fare. They also face a life ban for the most serious incidents. A special BA committee meets to consider the length of any ban, with a year often considered enough.