Legal authority of a Commander to offload passengers
 

Buongiorno,

I am a pilot based in Italy working for a UK based airline... I would like to have input from Italian pilots on a recurring problem. In th UK, the Air Navigation Order gives the Commander of a flight the authority to offload passengers who endanger the safety of a flight. The police provide more or less unquestioning support to offload disruptive passengers.

However, when faced with dispruptive passengers in Italy the local or airport police seem to go out of their way to not offload the passengers. I have had a dispatcher tell me that the police forced them to board a violent passenger. Can that be legal? Surely no-one can tell you to take a drunk/violence/terrorist onboard?

What can you do to offload disruptive passengers in Italy? Where do you legally stand? I am aware of the form that you should give to the police but I've seen police laugh at that.

Your help is very much appreciated,

Screwballs

Ps. The reasons behind the anger has been heavy drunkenness/delayed flight by two hours/death of a relative which led to physical violence at the gate.

Hey Screwballs,

The police is not entitled to argue on your decisions. As a commander you are in charge for the safety of the airplane and its occupants as the air law prescribes. If a passenger is reported to be unruly or disruptive, you act just like if you were in the uk, yellow card first, then if he goes on, he's off. Honestly never had any problems when offloading unruly passengers in Italy.

Maybe I've just been unlucky! Offloading is a last resort and would never been considered for point scoring with a rude pax - what's the point?

The issue I'd see with threatening to can the flight is having even more upset pax onboard the a/c with police who may have already demonstrated unwillingness to be pro-actively helpful. And it's quite harsh on the 99% of well behaved passengers.

And maybe it's just my bad luck to have had two situations were the police did not agree for at least half an hour to offload the passenger.

Thanks for the replies,

Screwballs