| Laarbruch72 |
6th Sep 2017 09:47 |
You can theoretically share information on disruptive passengers and it's occasionally done in extreme cases, (the information commissioner has approved the practice) but it's far from easy. For a start, airlines have very different booking systems that can't just simply share this type of information at the click of a button. Then there's the numbers, a medium sized UK carrier will have 3 to 4 hundred cases a year, so an easyJet sized carrier will have more like 1500. Considering that easy's booking systems and watchlists aren't the same as say, Thomson's, then somebody would have to input all of that information into their own watch list, and then do the same with all the cases from the other airlines. Putting together a case file and adding a passenger to a watch list used to take me 30 mins minimum. Getting unmanageable already isn't it?
Then consider that very few airlines even have a watchlist so they'll not necessarily be able to do anything with the information anyway. Then there's mistaken identity issues, the possibilities of changing passports... it all needs to be very, very carefully managed even in the one airline managing its own problem passengers. So no, airlines can't simply share the information en masse. I've done it when we've had an extremely violent passenger outbound resulting in the inbound leg being cancelled; I shared the case with the 3 other carriers who also operated a UK sector from that airport, but what they could do with the information was very likely not much, certainly not in the longer term. So it's a battle you have to pick.
Same with the other PPRuNe phrase... "Send them the bill!". Work on just one case pursuing a very poor person for the costs of a divert, and you'll soon know the futility of it. It costs the airline a fortune in legal costs on top of the divert, and then your disruptive passenger pays you back bit by bit if you're successful, at whatever the court has found they can afford. In one case I dealt with, we were in the region of 120k out of pocket, and he's paying us back at 80 pounds a month. You can't simply get money back that they don't have. Jet2 have pursued a few recently but that's more to send a message, and it's still very expensive for them to do. Again you have to pick your cases wisely even if you're only going for the PR benefits, because courts are an expensive option, even for the winner.
|
