International Civil Aviation Day

  The 196 country members supporting the Paris Agreement established an enhanced transparency framework (ETF) that requires them to report on plans, actions and progress made towards climate change improvements starting next year (2024). The information collected through the ETF will be assessed and recorded, thereby providing international procedures and recommendations for countries to establish ambitious plans for next wave of reviews by participants which occur every five years.µ The global impact of climate change has led to extensive research on fueled aircraft propulsion systems since commercial aviation contributes about 4.9 percent of total global fossil fuel emissions. Mandated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) , the aviation industry is required to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, with the transition from jet engines powered by hydrocarbons to propulsion systems that use alternative climate-neutral energy sources. Established by ...

  RISK REGISTER.  It is highly recommended to create and maintain a Risk Register, containing the relevant risk information for each of the identified scenarios. This risk register should be reviewed regularly as part of the business continuity process.  RISK ASSESSMENT.  Risk is commonly defined as a combination (product) of likelihood and impact of an event. This is also the case in a contingency context. In contrast to common (economic) risk assessments, where likelihood and impact are equally weighted, contingency situations have some particularities. Contingency situations, fortunately, have a low occurrence likelihood. Humans are known to have problems dealing probabilistic events, especially with low likelihood events. In addition to these low base rates, the impact variation can be very high, and the impact mechanisms are often not very well understood. For this last group of scenarios, further research is necessary to enable better risk contingency risk asse...

  The terms “unruly passengers”, “disruptive passengers” and “unruly and disruptive passengers” are commonly understood to refer to passengers who fail to respect the rules of conduct on board aircraft or to follow the instructions of crew members and thereby create a threat to flight safety and/or disturb the good order and discipline on board aircraft. It seems that hardly a week goes by without the media reporting on a high-profile unruly and disruptive passenger incident onboard a flight. While it’s true that only a tiny minority of the 4.3 billion passengers that travel by air each year (pre-COVID19 pandemic) become unruly, they have a disproportionate impact. Such incidents may: ▪ threaten the safety and security of the aircraft, other passengers, and crew ▪ cause physical, mental, and emotional harm to other passengers and crew; ▪ result in inconvenience to other passengers due to operational disruption (e.g., delays and diversions). International air travel is by far the sa...

 How significant is the issue? Statistics from both industry and regulators such as the UK Civil Aviation Authority, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as shown overleaf)) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) point to a long-term trend of increasing frequency and severity of unruly passenger incidents. From this material , it seems clear that this will continue to be an issue that needs to be addressed. IATA IDX - Unruly Passenger Incident Reports – January 2021 to December 2022. IATA itself has been collecting and analyzing safety reports from member airlines including incidents relating to unruly and disruptive passengers since 2007. The IDX dataset is the only global dataset of unruly passenger incidents that is available. The most recent report from January 2021 to December 2022 has been developed using aggregated and de-identified data from IATA’s IDX program. A total of 20,301 reports were extracted in the period. The IATA data incident rate per 1,000 fl...

It is clearly preferable to avoid unruly and disruptive incidents occurring in the first place than to try and manage them during the flight. How ground and cabin crew react to situations is crucial and de-escalation and other training techniques aimed at preventing and managing incidents will be covered in Section 4. However, IATA strongly believes deterrence has a key role in preventing such incidents. Airlines want their customers to have a safe and enjoyable journey, but actions that affect the safety and comfort of other passengers and crew cannot be tolerated and those who become unruly and disruptive need to know there are serious consequences to their actions. This sends a very powerful message to those who may feel that rules and regulations do not apply to them.  That being the case, several aspects relevant to deterrence should be reviewed, namely: ▪ Are travelers aware of what constitutes unruly and disruptive behavior onboard and what legal and other sanctions may resu...

 Enhancing deterrence is important, but it is a medium to long-term endeavour. In the meantime, preventing disruptive incidents from happening in the first place is a key focus for the industry which recognizes it has an important role to play. Effective training for cabin crew, multi-stakeholder initiatives and associated awareness campaigns are important elements that can make a real difference to the avoiding, de-escalating, and/or managing unruly passenger incidents . IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) standards require that member airlines have a policy and procedures which address unruly behavior including as a minimum: Identifying, offloading, restraining, and reporting of unruly passengers. Guidance provided to support this standard includes the responsible service of alcohol. IOSA training standards require that member airlines provide training on self-defence and the use of non-lethal protective devices (when carried) when managing such incidents. Guidance to support th...