Unruly passengers: Nigeria, ICOA Member states plead for protocol amendment
If the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) regarded as the regulatory body for global aviation accedes to the request of member states to ratify the 2014 Protocol to amend the convention on offences and certain other acts on board aircraft, it would go a long way to curb unruly air passengers incidents.
Member state plea to ICAO is a result of the rising reports of unruly passenger behaviour on international flights.
Unruly passenger behaviour has caused untold hardship to airlines including Nigerian operators with no end in sight to curb the menace.
Nigerian airlines are said to have lost an estimated N15 billion annually to bad behaviours of passengers, which avoidably lead to flight delays.
An airline operator who pleaded anonymity told Aviation Metric that poor passenger behaviours constitute the major cause of flight delays in the country and had led to huge financial losses to the airlines.
The source, quoting ICAO said airlines contribute little to the cause of flight delays, but said in Nigeria, in addition to weather, VIP movement and tech (Aircraft on Ground (AOG), passenger behaviour were major causes of delays and cancelled flights.
He insisted that an average Nigerian traveller had not embraced the culture of rescheduling when flights are cancelled, a policy that follows international standards and recommended practices.
He said the insistence of passengers whose flights are cancelled to be airlifted first the following day gives rise to disruption of flights, which snowballs into weeks of delays and cancellations.
He explained that airlines schedule the number of flights that must be operated by each aircraft, but when a previous flight is cancelled, passengers’ insistence that they must be airlifted first before the airline operates its normal schedule, disrupts flight operations.
He emphasised that industry-standard stipulates that when a flight is cancelled, passengers of such flights are to wait for the rescheduling of their flights by the existing airline schedule, but noted that the reverse was the case in Nigeria.
The call aims to hasten the ratification of the 2014 Protocol amending the Convention on Offences and Certain Other Acts Committed on Board Aircraft (Montréal Protocol 2014 or MP14).
Since its adoption on April 2014, MP14 seeks to address jurisdictional gaps hindering the prosecution of offences during international flights.
It needs 2/3 number of states to ratify before it comes into effect. Nigeria was ratified in 2019.
“On the tenth anniversary of MP14, Member States must reinforce their commitment to safe air travel,” emphasized Salvatore Sciacchitano, President of the ICAO Council.
ICAO highlights the global surge in unruly passenger incidents as not merely a comfort issue but a significant safety and security concern. In many cases, the Tokyo Convention 1963 confers jurisdiction based on aircraft registration, creating complications during landings in foreign countries.
MP14 rectifies this by granting jurisdiction to the State of landing, empowering States
to handle unruly passengers regardless of aircraft registration. The Protocol also assigns jurisdiction to the State of Operator for offences on foreign-registered aircraft.
To date, States 47 across all regions have ratified the Protocol, effective from 1 January 2020.
ICAO Secretary General Juan Carlos Salazar urges ratification and advocates for utilizing ICAO-developed tools to prevent and respond to unruly passenger incidents.
Guidance is available in ICAO’s Manual on the Legal Aspects of Unruly and Disruptive Passengers (ICAO Doc 10117)
This includes a list of likely offences and outlines an administrative sanctions regime.
Moreover, under the 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation, ICAO has adopted Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) regarding unruly behaviour, incorporated into the Convention’s Annexes 17 and 9.
A wealth of ICAO guidance material supports the implementation of these SARPs.
Google+