Flying the Unfriendly Skies

It's no secret to anyone who travels on a regular basis that people are getting, well, unfriendlier when they're in the air or on the road. Lack of consideration for other passengers, arguments over luggage space and at the extreme end threats & assaults on other passengers and crew are sadly becoming the norm rather than the exception in the airline industry.



Without getting into a social commentary on other aspects of society, it can be agreed that this 'misbehaving' in the skies is an alarmingly increasing trend.

Blame oil price rises, extra security measures or Santa Claus all you like, it's not acceptable and shouldn't be tolerated as something which can't be fixed.

The most notable recent case I've heard about is one on a flight to Darwin, where a passenger became verbally abusive & threatening to both fellow passengers & crew.

The article says: "Sydney man Simon Wilson Menzies, 31, was drunk and angry when he told the female cabin crew manager on a flight this week that he could "bring the plane down if he wanted." Menzies said: "I'm half muslim, half Aboriginal and everyone else is a white a*******. I could f******blow up the plane." He then began to sing a song about the plane crashing and everyone dying.

After various altercations with other passengers & (allegedly) the flight's captain, Menzies eventually returned to his seat and was arrested & held overnight on arrival in Darwin.

A court last week convicted him as the first person to be charged under new laws relating to threatening and/or assualting aircraft crew which came into effect on March 30th.

Apparently the passenger had been mixing antidepressants & alcohol & gave this as the reason for his behaviour. Here's where it gets disappointing. According to the article,

(The magistrate) fined him $400 and released him on the suspended sentence in time for his flight to Bali the following morning.

Under the new laws the maximum summary penalty for threatening or assaulting a flight crew member is two years prison or a $13,500 fine.

So, under a new law which allows up to 2 years in prison & a $13,500 fine, this idiot got less than 5% of that amount in a fine and more astonishingly, was allowed BACK ON THE SAME CARRIER to continue his "family holiday".

For threatening a whole planeload of people (whether he meant it or not), the most he got was a slap on the wrist & little deterrent to doing it again. I hope the crew involved file a complaint with the union & the OH&S regulator for failing to provide adequate follow-up & a safe working environment for those crew who had to fly this jerk the next day. He was a known offender & yet was allowed to keep on flying, putting yet more passengers and crew at risk.

In my opinion this is an absolute farce & 'new laws' are only as good as the judges enforcing the punishments handed out under them. This guy probably spent the same amount of money on his airfare & holiday in Bali & the fine would have been no deterrent for anyone else thinking of doing the same thing. People get jail time for lesser offences like unpaid speeding tickets than this guy got. Until the authorities get tougher on imposing sentences to the full extent of the law, I'm afraid that this type of behaviour will only continue if not increase further.

Don't even get me started on the flight crew allegedly getting involved. I hope this part is only media beatup because if they in fact did come out of the cockpit, it was surely a mistake of huge proportions and someone deserves some retraining if this is how it played out! I do think though that the wording of the article may be to blame, and they could well have been talking about this occuring as the passenger was removed on arrival.

This incident follows another as passengers got into a scuffle in Hobart over "carry on" luggage. Sounds like a carry-on, all right!

What do you think about 'air rage' and assaults in the air? Do you think it's increasing? Are the punishments fair or are people getting off 'scot free'? Leave me a comment or let me know what you think on Twitter or Facebook.

(Photos: Restraint: avsec.com, Passengers: Mail Online)

A Question of Restraint

This week, two Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) on a Continental flight to Brazil became tangled in a legal/political scandal when they fled the country after being charged with assault.

Their 'crime'? Arresting a woman who became unruly on the flight and actually bit one of the marshalls. The twist? Said woman is the wife of a senior Brazilian court judge. Oooh, tricky!!


The news reports that they "fled the country using alternate travel documents rather than face what they believed to be trumped-up charges, sources said."

What piqued my interest in this story was the circumstances surrounding why the marshals acted. According to the article:

"a female passenger who appeared to be intoxicated tried to serve herself drinks by going to the plane's galley, one source said. The plane's crew asked air marshals to intervene, and two marshals approached the woman, who began struggling with them."

The woman was arrested after biting one of the marshals. What jumped out at me is this part:

"The plane's crew asked air marshals to intervene"

Really?? In an ideal world, the cabin crew should have no idea who or where the air marshals are. Only the captain should know. Indeed, this was the case at two carriers I worked for. The only way we'd know a marshal was onboard was if something happened and they chose to act. There was no way in the world we'd have any clue who they were (aside from our own guesses, which were probably wrong) and the captain would not tell us unless there was a very good reason for him to.

Why? Well, after 9/11 the reasons are obvious. Reduce the amount of people who know the identity of the marshal/s, reduce the amount of people who could be coerced into talking.

I accept it as a sad reality of my job that should a hijacker/crazy person bent on taking over the plane threaten my life, the pilots would have to let me die rather than give in to demands to access the flight deck. (I wouldn't have it any other way- one is far better than three hundred!)

So this does make me wonder, should the crew have known the identity of the marshals, and secondly, was it appropriate for them to ask the FAM to intervene?

In my opinion, no. I say this with the disclaimer that I was not there, but going by the facts we know so far, an unruly passenger would not have me asking for help from a Federal Air Marshal (FAM) -if I even knew who they were.

By asking them to act, the crew have now compromised their cover, potentially letting someone with sinister intentions take them out in order to gain control of the aircraft unimpeded. Sure, the passenger could have been threatening the crew, but on the modern jetliner, a crew should be able to take down and restrain an unruly passenger if necessary, and has the training & equipment to do so. Unless the passenger was making an attempt to take control of the plane or enter the flight deck, the marshals should not have been put in the position to intervene.

Then, of course, the possibility is raised that in fact the marshals chose to act. In this case, they are trained to make that decision but one does wonder what really went on if in fact they were the ones who initiated the intervention.

Just for some background, here's a link to the TSA page on the FAM Program. Interestingly, it uses the phrase "defeat hostile attacks".

While I know having a passenger freak out on a flight is scary, I doubt you could really call it a hostile act in the context of anti-terrorism.

Wikipedia mentions in relation to the Canadian CACPP program, which notes that "APOs, however, will not be involved in controlling unruly passengers". Interestingly, the article notes that in this case, flight attendants and pilots ARE aware of the presence of marshal/s. In light of this incident, it does beg the question- is telling the cabin crew the indentity of a marshal appropriate?

What do you think? As a traveller, would you feel comfortable knowing your crew can ID an air marshal? Would you as crew be comfortable with that information? If a country decides that crew should know who the marshals are, what about making that voluntary? I personally would feel more comfortable having the choice to decline knowing that information. We don't know what we might say when push comes to shove.

Leave a comment & tell me your thoughts, or as always Tweet me!!