Dear Editor,
I have seen a few comments about the fiasco which occurred on July 4, 2008 when the emergency chute of a Delta flight was activated by a reportedly inebriated passenger after the aircraft had come to a stop on the apron at Timehri. I have professionally considered that the views expressed in the print media were in the main inadequate and were not a professional and logical critique.
The crew on an aircraft in flight or in turn-round mode is headed by the aircraft commander.
The powers of the commander are in essence as follows: “An aircraft commander who has reasonable grounds to believe that a person has committed or is about to commit aboard his aircraft, an offence or an act jeopardizing safety or good order on board, may impose upon that person such reasonable measures, including restraint as are necessary to protect the safety of the aircraft and of persons and property on board to maintain good order and discipline or to enable him to deliver the person to competent authorities or to disembark him. Crew members may be authorised or required and passengers maybe authorised or requested to assist in imposing such restraint” – Air Law (Shawcross and Beaumont).
Airline passengers who fly first class are wined and dined by the airline and are expected to display a behaviour pattern in keeping with good taste and decorum. Among these would be a small minority who would enjoy the chance of having someone like a flight attendant at their beck and call to do their bidding, and would also seek the chance of making themselves a spectacle, even if it means repeated requests for the largesse available in the form of liquor miniatures to be consumed with gay abandon. They have to impress all and sundry that they are ‘Bintos,’ in the parlance of the late Wordsworth McAndrew. One is not entitled to consume alcohol from either personal duty free purchased stocks or those given as the perks of a first-class fare to the degree that he/she could become visibly inebriated with an unsteady gait or slurred speech.
I am not aware to what extent that the errant passenger on Delta posed a nuisance or danger to fellow passengers or to the flight attendants or to the aircraft during five hours of flight. I then ask how cabin staff were to deduce that the alcohol intake of the particular passenger would have culminated in his deploying the escape chute because of his impatience with the fixing in place of the aircraft steps. Isn’t it time that we have a modern airport with numbered gates and loading bridges for the docking of airliners?
As recently as Sunday, July 6, 2008 while on BW481 out of Fort Lauderdale I was twice offered some duty-free purchased Scotch by two passengers destined for Port-of-Spain who were seated in the two inner seats in my row, and I declined. After they had consumed two or three drinks they fell asleep and were no nuisance to me.
Mr Editor, time and again I have witnessed various passengers refusing to obey the instructions from flight attendants to remain buckled in the seats until the aircraft comes to a complete stop on the Timehri apron.
These passengers at the end of the aircraft landing run and during taxiing leave their seats and start taking hand pieces from the overhead lockers. When warned by the flight attendants to desist from this you would hear these passengers say, “Dis is Guyana,” “We deh home” and other balderdash, akin to the minibus culture of ‘I is’ ‘Waya deh pon?’
Given the reported drunkenness of the particular passenger, the flight attendant would have been correct to suggest to him that he could not consume additional alcohol as he could have become just as agitated as he did about the delay in deplaning in the normal manner. The attendant knowing that she might have been under observation by other passengers as to how she would handle him was content to let the passage of flight time deal with the matter, provided that safety was not compromised. Given the reported extent of his drunkenness he may have had an accident in negotiating the passenger steps while deplaning; the steps can be tricky even for those in a state of sobriety with carry-on pieces.
The quoted remark that the passenger made to people after the soft landing, that his father was rich and could pay for any damage, is a prime example of triumphalism. The first-class cabin in an aircraft is not a rum shop but an environment where one should display some sort of propriety if capable of so doing.
Yours faithfully,
Aubrey Alexander
Retired Deputy Director
Civil Aviation
