When I read about air rage incidents like in this thread, a common feature seems that the disruptive passenger was trussed up by improvised means (rope, really? Sometimes even with fellow passengers’ belts nor neckties).
Are there airlines that carry designated restraining equipment for tying up a person in a non-improvised way and/or have a designated position to place a passenger who needs to be restrained?
An example from railways: When subtypes of French and German high speed trains were constructed to operate on the other railway’s system, apart from the obvious features like signalling system and traction voltage/frequency one requirement that the German train had to fulfil for French approval was one compartment to be fitted with strong brackets to handcuff passengers to.
Interesting you should ask…just yesterday morning, listening to my local radio station, and it was reported there was a disruptive passenger on a flight…BUT…although the flight attendants had stuff like rope and tasers at their disposal, they were inadequately trained to actually USE those restraints.
It ended up being another passenger who did know how to tie the ropes etc that kept the moron restrained until landing.
The original source to that statement in the Wikipedia article is gone (and I cannot find it on archive.org either). Short of dismemberment, which cabin crew probably lacks proper equipment and training for too, what’s the difference between confining a passenger in toto and restraining individual body parts?
I think the point is that you can, e.g., handcuff his wrists together behind his back, but you can’t handcuff his wrist to a fixed part of the plane. (Presumably on the thinking that he has to be able to participate in an emergency evacuation, should the occasion arise.)
Apparently, it’s an issue of safety.
There was a movie back in the 1970’s where this was a plot point. (Starring Jack Nicholson, called The Last Detail, I think). *
In the movie, military policemen are escorting a prisoner to prison in another city, using public transportation–a Greyhound bus. The prisoner escapes because they remove his restraints.
The reason for removing them was given in the movie as a “safety precaution”–if the vehicle is involved in an accident or fire breaks out, the prisoner has to be free enough to move away from the llife-threatening danger.
So I’m guessing that on an airplane, you can handcuff an unruly passenger with his hands behind his back, but you can’t cuff him to the seat.
*disclaimer–it’s been 40 years since I saw the movie, so I may be wrong. But it’s really interesting
how a random thread like this brings back old memories that I would never know I had.
(on edit-----oops–ninja’ed by 10 minutes. I should have hit "reply’ before I answered that phone call. )
Working for an Australian company. We carry wrist restraints similar to cable ties but we don’t carry tasers or guns. Flight attendants are taught self defence techniques with a refresher course each year. It is acknowledged that a flight attendant may not have the physical strength to overpower a passenger and other able bodied passengers are expected to help if needed. The reality of our work is that we fly scheduled closed charters and everyone on board the aircraft is an employee of the client company or one of their contractors. Unruly passengers are not normally an issue for us because the client has zero tolerance to such behaviour and will fire anyone who causes trouble.
