Passengers insulting cabin crew. What do you do? here is a case

[mickjoebill]

Its either him or me

May I create another scene in this scenario.
Abusive passenger is not offloaded but a nervous passenger sitting next to him has had enough and wants to get off the plane.

What do you do?
Does a passenger have a right to disembark the plane (without serious fines penalties or consequences) once the aircraft has pushed back?

Also if a group of passengers strongly suggest the abusive passenger be removed what do you do?


Mickjoebill

[angels]

Interesting query from Mickjoebill there!

Just wanted to nip in to say that as pax I have no problem with being delayed if someone is being turfed off.

Some years back I was flying to Tokyo from Hong Kong when a couple of idiots were offloaded. The captain came on, explained what had happened and why and then said, "Since the behaviour of these two has caused us to miss our slot I'm glad to say we'll be making good use of the extra time on the ground by offloading their baggage."

Smiles all round from the people who had seen the behaviour of the offloaded chaps....and the time was made up!

[G SXTY]

If in doubt, offload.

Absolutely no qualms about offloading drunk and/or abusive passengers at my airline. We had one character recently who'd had a few too many in the airport bar, staggered out to the aircraft and, when asked for his boarding pass, declared that he couldn't "fxxking find it." The no.1, deciding he was on very thin ice, allowed him to board but put her head round the flightdeck door and advised us she was keeping an eye on him.

His luck ran out just before the doors closed, when he decided to liven up the no.3's welcome p.a. by doing monkey impressions to his mates. The no.1 swiftly returned to the flightdeck to ask if we could offload him. No discussion - security were called and he was escorted from the aircraft. As he was led back to the terminal, he was still arguing and swearing - which begs a question, if he was like that surrounded by half a dozen security people and a couple of policemen, what would he have been like at 20,000' with two young female cabin crew?

The only thing predictable about drunks is their unpredictability. He might have fallen asleep, but then again he might have got seriously unpleasant. It's not a risk I'd want to take. I would much - much - rather take a slot delay than risk someone kicking off in the cabin whilst in flight.

[pilotbear]

It happens in Private too, our owner is so rude and obnoxious to the C/C that we now have no-one full time and rely on a couple (they are very patient) of freelancers who will only work for 10 days a month
He is not necessarily a bad person, but he doesn't see the consequences of his (or his family members) actions as he is used to having 'servants' all his life.
He is always very polite to the Flight deck though

[str8 hostie]

firstly the air navigation order instructs all pax to obey the commands of the aircraft commander, the commanders authority is given to the crew, the seat belt light is legal order and to disobey any of the afore mentioned is a criminal offence. secondly to use abusive words or behaviour in a public place is an offence under section 5 of the public order act.

if this pax was on in my cabin i would have no hesitation in having him arrested at our departure airport if the cap or company didn't do this i would refuse the duty!!!

pity you can't have pax arrested for being ers

[Ten West]

"...To stay calm and polite in the face of abuse is horribly difficult, but age and experience help. "

I'm not so sure about that Flapsforty.

I'm now 42 and I've been on all the customer services courses in a previous working life, but the older I get the more trouble I have in resisting the urge to drop any abusive idiot I meet with a well-aimed headbutt!

I blame ten years working with Joe Public in retail.

How you CC put up with some of the idiots you encounter is a source of wonderment to me. But then you do have to ask the question "Should we be serving alcohol at airports?" I don't believe we should.

So glad I'm in 'Ops' now.

[Magic Buff]

Headbut

Ah Ten West, the trouble with the headbut technique, is that you might come accross someone like me, and I'm horrible and your headbut might result in serious injury, for you! just kidding, I'm a nice chap really.
Yes well the sale of alchohol at airports and on board is asking for trouble isnt it? but the businessmen would argue that banning it would lead to an increase in airfares, due to increased landing fees and this being passed on to the pax, thus leading to a reduction in the number of flyers and therefore job losses, the converse argument of course is that it would make flying a more pleasuable experience for others and therefore increase pax numbers.

Personally I believe, where you have large ammounts of alchohol in what for many is already a very stressful environment is beyond stupid, but hey what do I know!

[west lakes]

Saw this on the news yesterday, can't help but think that it would be great for you guys if the airlines and airports could get their acts together like this.

BBC NEWS | England | Campaign to stop ambulance abuse

All licensed premises belonging to Pubwatch schemes in north-west England have committed to considering the use of banning orders on individuals who subject ambulance crews to physical or verbal assaults in any of their premises. The banning order if agreed by Pubwatch members will see them excluded from all pubs and clubs within that particular Pubwatch area

.

[VAFFPAX]

mickjoebill, I believe airlines tend to re-seat the nervous passenger where there is space to do so and the SLF in question feels safe enough after such a move...

I recall one incident retold by a c/c member where a rude and obnoxious SLF made a huge fuss about pax around them (amongst other things that this SLF had the view that he belonged in business class, not amongst the unwashed peons in Y). The c/c response was to move the person next to him to business, leaving him stewing in Y for the rest of the flight.

:-)

S.

[deltayankee]

Why not stop them boarding

I am all for offloading abusive and violent passengers, and I think that there should be a zero tolerance policy -- an airplane is not a place like a bar where you can throw people out later. At the same time I also think it is unfair to delay everyone else. Isn't the obvious solution just to be more careful at the gate and leave the drunks on the ground?

Just two weeks ago at CDG I saw two very obvious drunks staggering around the gate area pestering other passengers. I was amazed to see one of them again on the plane trying to move into business class and being dealt with very effectively by an AF hostie.

I agree that there will always be some pyschopaths that don't appear drunk but still misbehave, but surely a no drunks policy would reduce the risk.

And if that is not possible could they not put some sort of cage in the pointy bit at the back of the plane to accomodate these people?

[glider insider]

Before I started my current job, I worked for Go at STN, dealing mainly with large groups. We used to have a particular problem with groups of teenagers who would be rude to the CC, steal seat belts and life vests and generally cause mayhem. Following an adverse report from the crew on the first sector, I used to have great pleasure in meeting them at the gate for the return sector, taking their passports from them, and telling them that they would be given to the aircraft captain. If they behaved nicely they get them back, any bad behaviour and they could get them from the police on arrival. Strangely enough, they were always well behaved after that!

[ONTPax]

west lakes quotes the following:

All licensed premises belonging to Pubwatch schemes in north-west England have committed to considering the use of banning orders on individuals who subject ambulance crews to physical or verbal assaults in any of their premises. The banning order if agreed by Pubwatch members will see them excluded from all pubs and clubs within that particular Pubwatch area

This idea has been considered by common carriers and retail establishments here in the States as well. It makes for a good P.R. "sound byte" for the news media, but not much else.

My question is, how do you enforce something like this? Let's say the offender comes back to the same establishment the following day, or a week later, and there are different personnel on duty who don't recognize him? I recall a commuter train system that was proposing to "ban" certain troublesome passengers. Yeah, right. How do you recognize the offender ahead of time and prevent him from stepping foot on the property? Should everyone have to pass through a security checkpoint and flash a scanable ID badge? Welcome to Brave New World.

ONTPax

[Romeo India Xray]

On topic but not related to removing the PAX for the AC directly.

Mrs RIX works at the airport. One day an abusive passenger started to threaten her because she was in the middle of handling a problem with a delayed flight and could only point him in the right direction insted of taking him there personally.

Few weeks later (unbeknown to me), same guy, same levels of abuse, different worker and different non reason.

Fast forward 3 months and 5 of us were in the city centre enjoying a meal. Same guy (first time I met him), walks up to Mrs RIX and starts threatening her, telling her that the next time he sees her alone then she is done for. I stepped up and he saw the size of our group at just about the time he was going to take a swing for me - guy was not drunk.

Then the remainder of the group stepped up to him and outnumbered he started pretending all the stragers around him were his best buddies, got in his car and drove off.

Being in a reasonably influential position, I have instigated that he is no longer welcome on ANY flights here I suspect he only does this on the ground because he has an exit route if he can't get his own way, but never the less, I won't take the chance with such a mindless idiot kicking off at FL360 in an enclosed tube full of other PAX and staff for him to hurt.

RIX

[west lakes]

ONTPax

My question is, how do you enforce something like this

All the pubs involved with the scheme have photo's of the banned persons behind the bar (but not in public view).
Most of the towns round here have a similar scheme and as far as I know it works very effectively.
Pubs in the scheme have a direct line to the police control room.

[6chimes]

Worth a read

I recall an incident told to us on my cc training course some years ago. Sorry it's quite long but it will make you think twice.

Boarding the last flight on a friday night of a S/H domestic, lots of business people making their way home for the weekend. One well dressed man boards and goes straight into the a toilet at the back. The crew member down the back hears strange noises and what sounds like a bit of vandalism going on. The man comes out and goes back to his seat. The crew member checks the toilet and sure enough its a bit of a mess. He calls the front and tells the purser, who asks the crew member to keep an eye on the pax. Meanwhile the man then continues to act strangely and keeps pulling his table up and down. The crew then decide he is either mad or under the influence of something so they initiate getting him offloaded. The police arrive and he is escorted off the a/c and the flight proceeds normally.

Did the crew do the right thing?

It turns out that this man was a pathologist and his last case of the week was a road traffic accident where a young woman had died. When he pulled back the sheet to start the autopsy he found it was his daughter.

The man was trying to get home to his wife and was obviously very upset.

I do not know if this story is true but it certainly could be. It made me realise that when you are going to do a job that involves dealing with thousands of people there will be times that you cannot just quote rules and regulations. Certainly there are a great many rude and ignorant people out there and often they just love to create arguments, sometimes though there is a good reason why they are not acting like rational people. People travel for business, leisure and some people need to fly to get somewhere quickly because there is a personal crisis unfolding.

And that is also the same for the crew as some will almost certainly be at work when they really should be at home dealing with whatever crisis is going on there but are at work just trying to get through another day. Will they behave rationally when faced with an 'idiot'? Probably not.

6

[Juud]

Apocryphal or real, it's an excellent story to bring home the importance of doing things in the right order.
Thanks for writing that out 6chimes.

As I always stress in my briefings: "Whenever a pax behaves strangely, or even just triggers your gut feeling that something isn't right, go talk to him or her. Have a chat, try and find out a bit more. And if you for whatever reason do not want to do that yourself, ask me or the assistant Purser to do it for you. Better to have a few chats too many than carry one nutcase, better having a chat and find out about the dead husband in the hold than treating a grieving widow like a nutter the whole flight."

[Final 3 Greens]

Hi 6 Chimes

I do not know if this story is true but it certainly could be

Very much doubt it's true, but that isn't the point.

The story causes a paradigm shift in the way one looks at things.

I saw a CC member be really rude to some pax last week, well out of order from what I could see and after my initial emotional reaction of anger, then quickly slipped back into rational mode and wondered why someone in a crew on a well respected airline would behave like that.

I subsequently saw the #1 carefully observing her colleague with a concerned look, maybe she knew something I didn't and the rudeness was a symptom of her having a bad time.

So, true or not, the story is a brilliant technique to get people to think about things differently (cognitive shift) and when someone shared a similar tale with me over 10 years ago, I never forgot it, either and it helped me to change my reaction last week.

As to the original post, "insulting" is not the right word, "threatening behaviour" is and it is totally unacceptable.

[wings folded]

I think my remarks may be relevant.

Many years ago, was waiting to board a flight from an East Anglian airport to Amsterdam with onward connection to a destination in southwest France.

All of a sudden, aircraft doors close, engines start and off it goes, direction Stansted, empty.

I enquire why our plane has left without us.

Am told that there was a U/S aircraft at Stansted, and our plane was needed down the road to work that sector.

I state quietly and reasonably that this is a little bit irritating.

I get the response "you will get there sooner or later and at least you are going towards nice weather" (It was a bit chilly at home)

I reply, "I am going to the funeral of a very close relative"

Poor girl is covered in confusion, doesn't know how to retract out of the dilemma.

Because I travel quite a bit, and perhaps because I have made a bit of a t*t of myself every now and then, I elect not to give her a hard time.

When we finally board a replacement (and very late) flight, some PAX debate the delay with the same Ground Staff, having had ample hours and nothing much else to do in the meantime.

I invite them to proceed to board without further debate, since all they are doing is compounding the delay; in other words "shut the **** up and board, we are all delayed"

No words were said but the GS lady gave me a sort of "we are in this together" look, and quietly murmured "thanks" when she handed back my passport and Boarding Card.

Not happy memories all round, but just a reminder that people will respond often according to the circumstances. We are all human and therefore rather bizarre......

[qfcabin]

Wings Folded, I see you 'elected not to give her a hard time'. I don't understand why that option even presented itself to you. Why should you give her a hard time? She has done her best to placate you, and you elected to take it badly.She is NOT there as a target for your ego. Some people just don't get it!!

[Final 3 Greens]

qfcabin

I get the response "you will get there sooner or later and at least you are going towards nice weather" (It was a bit chilly at home)

If that was someone "doing her best" to manage the expectations of a passenger, whose aircraft had just been been reassigned, causing a long delay, then I would suggest that she was not competent to be in the role.

Her remark shows a lack of empathy, is dismissive and potentially inflammatory.

Under the circumstances, I think Wings Folded showed considerable restraint.