Need a pre-flight drink to calm your nerves? Well, just make sure you behave yourself, because Canada’s largest airline wants to allow information about nuisance guests to be shared between carriers.
Air Canada believe that airlines should be allowed to share intel about on-flight troublemakers in an effort to keep the skies safer.
In a submission to the federal government, they noted that a “carrier can ban people with a history of disruptive behaviour from taking further flights with that airline.”
However, as it currently stands, those who posed a safety risk to one airline are free to commit the same offences with alternative carriers because companies like Air Canada cannot exchange information with others.
We’re inclined to agree that the information should be shared.
Once we’re up in the air with a dangerous passenger on board, there’s very little the pilot or staff can do to control them. If they’re verbally or physically abusive, it can be a scary and unnerving time for airline workers and passengers alike.
Jim Bronskill of the Canadian Press references an incident that occurred back in December, when a man from Alberta was charged for endangering the life of a flight attendant who was injured on an Air Canada flight to India The flight was forced to turn around and head back to Toronto, where the police arrested a man from Calgary.
Fortunately, nobody was hurt in this instance. But the risk was real, and the whole cabin, crew and customers on board were at the very least severely inconvenienced. Just days before this, a passenger on board another Air Canada flight bit the finger of a flight attendant.
While it was unclear if the guilty parties in these cases were first or second time offenders, if the rules changed to allow airlines to share information about unruly passengers it would certainly allow carriers to blacklist or take extra precautions in subsequent voyages.
Currently the civil aviation authority has a four-tiered scheme to gauge the passenger’s level of disruption:
– Level 1 – disruptive behaviour (verbal)
– Level 2 – physically abusive behaviour
– Level 3 – life threatening behaviour (or display of weapon)
– Level 4 – attempted or actual breach of the flight crew compartment
Air Canada says that information should be permitted to be shared, when travellers engage in levels three and four incidents.
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