It’s becoming an all-too-familiar story: A flight being forced to turn around or to make an unscheduled landing because of the behaviour of an “unruly passenger”.
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In the latest incident, a Scoot flight that had left the Gold Coast bound for Singapore had to make an emergency landing in Sydney after a passenger reportedly sparked a mid-flight brawl.
The Australian Federal Police are investigating the circumstances of this particular incident, but just how many times are we going to have to read these kinds of headlines?
There is going to be the occasional incident that has a reasonable explanation, but for the majority of them, you have to ask just what the passengers involved were thinking.
The days of getting on a plane and downing glass after glass of free grog should be long gone. Yet, despite more airlines charging passengers for alcohol and an increasing awareness of the risks associated with this actvitity, these incidents do keep happening.
Sadly, overindulgence in alcohol is probably the underlying cause for many of these incidents, and these days there is just no way for anyone to claim they didn’t know how too much booze can potentially affect a person’s behaviour.
In the years since the September 11 attacks, air travel has changed. Security is much tighter and passengers are jumpier.
The days of getting on a plane and downing glass after glass of free grog should be long gone. Yet, despite more airlines charging passengers for alcohol and an increasing awareness of the risks associated with this actvitity, these incidents do keep happening.
It must be extremely unsettling for other passengers to watch bad behaviour on flights and be left wondering whether it's just going to a long, loud, unpleasant trip or if there is the real possibility of a genuine threat developing.
Where is it going to end?
A ban on alcohol being consumed on aircraft would be one option, but just how far will airlines be forced to go to stamp out mid-air stupidity?
Will the day come when passengers are subjected to breathalysing and drug screening before they are allowed to set foot inside the aircraft?
Surely the simple solution is for adults to behave like adults and not look at a plane flight as an excuse for a free booze-up?