by At the departure gate I feared the worst. It was 10 a.m. at Barcelona airport on a Sunday in early summer and I was sipping one sober Café con leche and waiting to board for London Gatwick. “Oy Oy, Choffers!” shouted a British man in his thirties as he touched the bottom of another man who was unsteady on his feet and holding a bottle of rosé.
Choffers, obviously a soon-to-be-married groom, was in an advanced state of drunkenness. As he emerged from his phalanx of deer mates, I noticed his clothing: a flamenco dress with a polka dot bodice that tried to accommodate his beer belly.
“Please God, don’t say they’re sitting next to me,” I said in a silent prayer, raising my eyebrows at a wealthy Spanish family who as a whole recoiled from the scene.
I boarded the plane while the deer dawdled and drank the rest of their drinks. “Longarm, Choffers, you idiot!”
The fear set in 10 minutes later when I noticed that the row in front of me was empty, as were the seats directly to my right and left. Apparently I had somehow angered the gods of the Ramblas and I was in for a long journey. A few minutes later, the deer shuffled to their perches while Choffers sat directly to my left in a seat next to the aisle.
For the first 30 minutes of the flight, the deer were playful and chatty. Choffers was supplied with more Rosé miniatures (why Rosé, I wondered?). I began to suspect that the drunken bunch hadn’t slept the night before and perhaps the night before that too.
The first problem arose when Choffers became restless when we hit turbulence. “Please sit down sir, the seatbelt sign has come on,” a motherly flight crew member said in a reassuring tone. Choffers finally nodded and obeyed. Ten minutes later the seat belt sign was turned off and one of the deer questioned me about my marital status.
I looked around and thought about asking to change seats – there seemed to be an empty seat a few rows back by the window. I was about to grab my laptop and run away when it happened. A very green Choffers stood up, leaned against my row of seats and urinated through his miniskirt onto my seat and onto me.
“Oh my God!” A woman in the hallway across the hall screamed. “Oh my God!”
Safety concerns
My brush with in-flight rudeness came to mind on Monday when Ryanair released a statement outlining the costs incurred as a direct result of a disruptive passenger on board its flight from Dublin to Lanzarote last April.
Ryanair is seeking €15,000 (£12,650) in damages from the unnamed Irish passenger to cover the cost of additional fuel, accommodation for more than 160 passengers and crew, landing fees and legal costs. In a statement on the company website, a Ryanair spokesman said: “European [governments] They repeatedly fail to take action when disruptive passengers endanger the safety of the aircraft and force them to reroute. It is time for the EU authorities to take action to restrict the sale of alcohol at airports.”
The spokesperson added: “We do not understand why passengers are not limited to two alcoholic drinks at airports (with their boarding pass, in the same way they limit duty free sales) as this would lead to safer and better passenger behavior .” on board aircraft and a safer travel experience for passengers and crew across Europe.”
In a briefing note to the UK Department for Transport, researchers defined disruptive and unruly passengers as those who exhibited behavior ranging from verbal abuse (Level 1) to attempts to break through the flight deck (Level 4). The statement said such incidents have increased sharply in recent years, to more than 10,000 reports per year, compared to around 500 reports in 2007.
According to the International Air Transport Association, 31 percent of these incidents are due to alcohol intoxication, 26 percent are due to non-compliance with smoking regulations, 17 percent are due to non-compliance with other regulations, 8 percent are due to disputes with other passengers, 2 percent are safety threats and 1 percent are related to problems Service animals for passengers.
The highest rates of such incidents are observed in mainland Europe (more than 2,000 per year), the United Kingdom (around 500), the United States (around 90) and New Zealand (around 60).
Examples of unruly behavior cited in the briefing note include the case of Guilherme Alves De Melo, a Brazilian passenger who verbally and physically disrupted other passengers and the flight crew and “ate part of his boarding pass” on a flight from Calgary. to Chicago; a passenger on a Virgin Australia flight from Melbourne to Perth who “disrupted other passengers and crew by making death threats”; and a man, possibly living out a James Bond fantasy, who “wearing only his underwear, jumped over a security fence at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, ran to runway 27 and jumped onto the wing of the recently landed plane.”
“They are always British”
A quick survey of friends and acquaintances shows that collisions with unruly passengers are fairly routine, suggesting that the official figures only scratch the surface of an even bigger problem. Lydia Berman tells me she has “terrible memories” of an Etihad flight where “some drunk guys just used the back of the plane as a toilet because they didn’t like toilets on planes and the poor staff were helpless to intervene” .
Maya Middlemiss, a frequent traveler on flights from Alicante to Gatwick, tells me she’s seen it all, including “Welsh hen parties, boys in matching clothes, the police having to bring people on board and arrest them – and they’re always British, me.” . “I’m embarrassed to say this!”
Even celebrities are not immune to unsavory behavior on board. In 2011, French actor Gérard Depardieu urinated in front of passengers on an Air France flight to Dublin when cabin crew refused to allow him to use the onboard toilet while the plane was preparing to take off.
A statement issued to French media on Depardieu’s behalf cited prostate problems and added that his friend and fellow actor Edouard Baer gave him a bottle to urinate in, which overflowed. At that time, Depardieu was removed from the plane.
Harsh punishments
Disruptive and unruly behavior by passengers violates the 1963 Tokyo Convention, which has been incorporated internationally into national aviation laws. Many countries also have strict national regulations, including China, where unruly passengers can end up in “administrative detention” for 10 days; India, where they can be permanently banned from flying; and in the US, where they can be prosecuted and face fines of up to £20,000.
In the United Kingdom, penalties for disruptive behavior depend on the seriousness of the behavior, as set out in the Civil Aviation Act 1982, Section 61, and can result in a prison sentence or a fine above the statutory maximum (£5,000).
European Union authorities have not yet responded to Ryanair’s call to legally limit alcohol consumption at the airport, but would I welcome such strict pre-flight regulations? When it comes to debauched British deer, sure.
When asked to respond to this article, easyJet asked Telegraph trips to obtain details of the flight so that the incident could be investigated. It added: “Safety is our top priority and we have a strict policy on alcohol consumption on board. Any passenger who appears to be under the influence of alcohol will be refused further alcohol. “We do not tolerate disruptive behavior on board and our cabin and ground crew are trained to assess disruptive incidents and act quickly and appropriately.”
