Unruly passengers on board aircraft

Abstract

Unruly behaviour on board aircraft can cause a minor inconvenience to the other passengers, or else, it can escalate to such a degree where the passengers’ safety is jeopardised. Over the last three decades, the number of unruly passenger incidents has increased dramatically. The frequency and severity of such incidents had become a growing concern of the international community and aviation industry itself. Consequently, different preventive and countermeasures have been implemented to cope and deter such behaviour. The primary aim of this paper is to focus on the legal aspect of trying and prosecuting the offenders who have committed an offence or act that jeopardises the safety of aircraft or good order on board. This was accomplished by analysing the international legal framework governing unruly behaviour, namely the Tokyo Convention of 1963 and its amending Montreal Protocol from 2014. The main factor that was observed is the way how these legal instruments addressed the provisions for trying the alleged offenders and their effectiveness in the deterrence of unruly behaviour. In this paper, formal legal and case-study methods, along with comparative reasoning, were used to analyse the legal instruments. The findings showed that the Tokyo Convention had made a valuable contribution to establishing an international security legal framework. However, considerable deficiencies of this treaty have hindered the global legal uniformity and effective enforcement mechanism. Those shortcomings were to be eliminated by the Montreal Protocol. Nevertheless, the analysis revealed that, while it succeeded to eliminate the most triggering shortcoming of jurisdiction, it failed to address the lack of strong enforcement and has even constrained the powers of in-flight security officers. Regrettably, that proves to impede the achievement of the Montreal Protocol’s objectives, and it sees only a small added value. Hence, further improvements are needed to ensure that it is effective in the realities faced by modern aviation.