Flight attendants urge action against air rage

Patricia Friend, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, at a news conference Friday. Flight attendants and ground crews are staging a 'day of action' against the abuse of airline employees

By Thurston Hatcher
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A flight attendants union accused airlines and the United States government Friday of failing to protect travelers and attendants from unruly passengers.

In its "Air Rage Report Card," the Association of Flight Attendants said airlines have neglected to promote cabin safety, train crew members to deal with incidents and support workers who are victims of air rage.

The AFA also gave poor marks to the U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Aviation Administration. It said the FAA has failed to require airlines to report all incidents or train crew members to handle air rage, and has failed to levy and collect fines as a deterrent.

The Justice Department was accused of not following through on its plan to "deputize" local law enforcement agencies to arrest perpetrators of air rage, which is a federal crime.

Unruly passengers Number of incidents reported to the FAA by year: 1995: 146 1996: 187 1997: 321 1998: 281 1999: 306 2000: 314 2001: 100 (as of June 15) Source: Federal Aviation Administration VIDEO Courses teach flight attendants how to deal safely with unruly airline passengers. CNN's Chris Wolfe reports (July 6) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)   MORE STORIES 'Ground rage' an overlooked problem     EXTRA INFORMATION Get details on the performance of major U.S. airports     RESOURCES FAA statement on air rage   Suggested solutions from the Association of Flight Attendants

"We're issuing this report card today in an effort to get airlines and the federal government to act now before there is an air rage disaster," the AFA's president, Patricia Friend, said at a news conference at Washington's Reagan National Airport.

Flight attendants planned to hand out leaflets Friday at airports in several cities, including San Francisco, California; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Phoenix, Arizona. The U.S. campaign coincided with a worldwide effort Friday by the International Transport Workers' Federation to draw attention to the air rage problem.

The FAA listed 306 reported incidents involving unruly passengers in 1999 and 314 incidents in 2000, up from 146 in 1995. There have been 100 reported incidents so far this year.

FAA 'aggressively pursues' unruly passengers

Friend said the number of actual incidents is higher. She said there are an estimated 4,000 incidents of air rage each year.

The FAA said in a statement Friday that it aggressively pursues every reported case of air rage and pushes for substantial fines for particularly serious incidents.

"The FAA believes that widely publicized criminal prosecution of air rage cases serves as a strong deterrent," the statement read.

A spokeswoman for the Air Transport Association, which represents the major U.S. airlines, said the group considers safety of employees and passengers a top priority and believes in zero tolerance when dealing with passenger unruliness.

But while the incidents are serious, they're also isolated, spokeswoman Diana Cronan said, noting the airlines flew more than 660 million passengers in 2000.

"It's not a huge growing epidemic as the news media's portraying it to be," she said.

Earlier this year, a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Shanghai, China, was diverted to Alaska when twin sisters were accused of interfering with the crew. One was accused of choking a flight attendant, and the other was accused of hitting two flight attendants and the plane's captain.

One of the flight attendants, Lynn White, tearfully recalled the incident Friday.

"Although this woman physically attacked me," White said, "she in effect assaulted all 260 people on that aircraft. She took them hostage."

Flight attendant Sam Bishop of US Airways described a 1999 incident in which a passenger became verbally and then physically abusive, for no obvious reason.

After a brief conversation near the end of the flight, Bishop said, "His response was to leap out of the seat and grab my neck and tie. It took myself and three passengers to pull me out of his choke hold and then subdue him." The passenger was later fined $1,100.

"Even though he attempted to strangle me, he wasn't charged with assault," Bishop said.

Not all the problems occur in the air. In 1999, a Virginia man was charged with attacking a gate agent during a long wait for a flight at Newark (New Jersey) International Airport. He pleaded self-defense and was acquitted earlier this year.

Tougher measures

The flight attendants group urged airlines to establish what it called more responsible alcohol policies, including not serving alcoholic drinks before take-off, serving only one drink at a time and never using free drinks as compensation for delays or cancellations.

It also called for a public education campaign to ensure that passengers understand the penalties for violent in-flight actions.

"We would like to see a major public education campaign about the consequences of engaging in this kind of behavior and that would include posters and notices all through the airports, including bars and restaurants that are serving alcohol," said AFA president Patricia Friend.

Elsewhere Friday, the International Transport Workers' Federation, which represents 600,000 aviation workers in 110 countries, marked its Worldwide Air Rage Campaign Day by urging more airlines and governments to tackle the problem.

It says only half of the airlines have policies addressing the problem, two-thirds offer cabin crews no training for dealing with disruptions, and most don't have equipment to restrain extremely violent and aggressive passengers.

Even if airlines do help, the group says that's often undermined by a lack of legal jurisdiction in the case. International law says the incidents are the responsibility of the country in which the aircraft is registered, which may not be where the plane is flying to or from. The ITF is calling for more national laws and for a global treaty to address the problem.