This comes the day after the airline said it had nearly 200 incidents of unruly behaviour a month, a new post-pandemic high. Now, with the busiest day of the year for travel looming on Friday December 22, Air New Zealand says it is a public service announcement that sadly bears repeating.
“Especially to somewhere like Tonga where the majority of customers are flying to visit friends and family. In an airport like that you can see people getting off onto the tarmac. You can feel the excitement.”
However, despite at times feeling like having arrived on the set of Love Actually, the pressures of travel can lead to a lot of unlovely behaviour.
As the airline gears up to carry 1.7 million passengers in the next six weeks, Morgan says that recent incidents of passengers disobeying crew, and verbal and physical abuse are unacceptable.
“A lot of people travelling over Christmas feel a greater level of stress though the period and this stress can manifest itself in behaviour that is contrary to our expectations and affects the experience of other travellers.”
Morgan, who is also deputy chair of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) operations committee, says that the uptick in unruly behaviour is an industry-wide problem. And, as a core part of international travel, that means it is a worldwide problem too.
Post-pandemic there has been an increase in unruly passenger incidents, to one in every 568 flights last year. This is an increase of 37 per cent on 2021 rates. More worryingly the rates of physical assaults, though rare, have increased 61 per cent across all carriers to one incident in 17,200 flights.
“There’s been an uptick in the severity - we’ve had physical assaults on both flight and ground staff, as well as customers,” says Morgan.
Chief safety officer Captain David Morgan says Air New Zealand will be taking a zero-tolerance approach to unruly behaviour. Photo / Greg Bowker
“We’ve had a look at the data and there’s no one route or time of day. Incidents can happen at any time. On a busy international network you’ll have commuters in the same space as travellers arriving at the end of long-haul routes, perhaps feeling a bit irritable.”
Although some airlines have linked the rise of unruly passengers to a return to international travel post-pandemic, Morgan isn’t sure of the link.
“After the pandemic we actually saw a drop in incidents. There was a lot of compliance and people seemed to be genuinely excited to be travelling again.”
But incidents are creeping up again in a steady three-year trend. The five main unruly passenger offences seen on Air New Zealand crafts are failure to follow orders, non-compliance with wearing seatbelts, disruptive conduct, verbal abuse, and vaping on aircraft.
“In New Zealand police and airport security have the ability to sanction passengers under the Civil Aviation Act,” says Morgan.
“Airlines have a range of sanctions they can apply to unruly passengers as well.”
Penalties include infringement notices ranging from $500 to $1000 and airline no-fly bans.
“When an individual is made aware of the consequences of their behaviour they tend to be contrite and apologetic, but it’s too late by that point,” says Morgan.
