Zero tolerance for air divas

UNRULY: AGGRESSIVE PASSENGERS POSE SAFETY RISK TO AIRPLANE, STAFF AND PASSENGERS

- Hein Kaiser

Pilots and aviation experts are agreed that incidents of "air rage" and disruptive behaviour on board aircraft must be dealt with in the harshest way possible because of the threat they pose to the airline and passenger safety.

A pilot said that, legally speaking, "flight deck crew are the sheriffs of the sky. In the air, they are the law."

He told The Citizen that they do not tolerate this kind of 'kak' from unruly travellers on flights.

It endangers everyone's safety on board and, he added, the near brawl on the FlySafair flight evidenced this.

Yet it happens more often than we might realise, another veteran pilot said.

"There are incidents all the time," he said. "They just range in terms of severity and the level of disruption. And the frequency is increasing."

The recent air rage incident on a FlySafair flight between Durban and Cape Town reinforced the danger that travellers can pose to one another.

The flight saw SABC employee and brand manager Nobuntu Mkhize caught on camera causing a severe disturbance and spewing racist comments verging on hate speech at crew. It quickly went viral and drew criticism from political parties and a condemnation from the South African Civil Aviation Authority.

In the US, unruly passenger behaviour has skyrocketed, with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recording 1 900 incidents in 2023 alone.