With a steady increase in reports of disruptive passengers interfering with commercial flights, the industry and its regulators have launched multiple campaigns to crack down on unruly behavior.
Although the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) cautions that comprehensive data are not available because of the absence of a uniform reporting system, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says that it received more than 66,000 reports of unruly passengers between 2007 and 2017. In 2017 alone, IATA said, 8,731 incidents were reported — the equivalent of one incident in every 1,053 flight sectors, or a rate of 0.95 incidents per 1,000 flight sectors, up from 0.73 incidents per 1,000 sectors the previous year (“Getting Out,” ASW 4/19).1
In reality, the number of incidents probably is higher, IATA said, noting that airlines sometimes do not turn over these data to IA…
