More than a week after news broke about a sordid urination episode on an Air India flight, remedies being proposed are akin to using Band-Aid to treat a bone fracture. With more instances of in-flight unruliness drawing public attention, the malaise has all appearances of a compound fracture needing surgery. Adhesive bandages are no cure.
Multiple times, I have been escorted by flight attendants from my seat to the toilet and back while the stewardess waited outside the urinal until I was ready to return to my seat. This was never because I was inebriated or unruly on the flight. It was the requirement in the 1980s in Poland on domestic flights of their national airline, Polskie Linie Lotnicze, better known by its abbreviation, LOT. As a foreign correspondent who did stints in Warsaw, I often had to fly to Gdansk, home of Nobel Peace laureate Lech Walesa, the anti-Communist Solidarity trade union leader – who later became Poland’s post-Communist president. I also made many trips to Kraków, then the spiritual abode of the later day Pope-Saint John Paul II. Hijacking of LOT domestic flights was frequent by disaffected Poles who wanted asylum in Western Europe. As a remedy, LOT domestic flights carried armed marshals. After their deployment, hijackings mostly stopped.
The presence of marshals with concealed guns was a routine part of the pre-departure announcements via the public address systems at Poland’s airports then. Invariably, flight attendants would approach foreigners like me, who did not speak Polish, and inform us before take-off that if we wished to go to the toilet, we should first press the call button above the seat. A member of the cabin crew would come and accompany any relief-seeking passenger to the toilet and back while marshals, who were incognito on board, would watch out discreetly for any trouble. It was abundantly clear that these armed law enforcement personnel would not hesitate to shoot at the first sign of trouble.
Need Tougher Rules
India is not lacking in the basic legal framework to deal with brawls like the one that passengers engaged in on a recent flight from Bangkok to Kolkata, videos of which have gone viral, sparking an uproar in the media and drawing rooms countrywide. Five years ago, domestic rules in India were rewritten through what is known as Civil Aviation Requirements. This statute is in urgent need of a comprehensive review. It is backed, in the operation of international flights, by a Global Convention on Offences and Other Acts Committed on Board Aircraft, which entered into force in 1969. There is also the Hague Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft, which is tougher because it was crafted primarily to deal with hijackings. India is a signatory to both these Conventions. The latter Treaty, which came into force in 1971, is the model for India’s anti-hijacking laws. Revision of Civil Aviation Requirements should equate delinquent behaviour by passengers, especially violence, with hijacking or commandeering a plane.
As India’s civil aviation sector records exponential growth with an increase in prosperity, the number of passengers who seek to replicate at airports and on aircraft the prevailing disorder at railway stations and bus depots will grow. Laws alone cannot handle this challenge, which poses serious threats to national security as the September 11, 2001 incidents in New York and Washington demonstrate. Neutralising this growing menace will require India to evolve into a hard society. First and foremost, India has to stop being a soft state on such matters. Imposition of paltry fines and placement of offenders on no-fly lists for 30 days are symptomatic of a soft state malaise.
After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States of America borrowed liberally from copy book of the martial law regime in Poland in the 1980s. Armed marshals were placed on flights in the US, especially on wide-bodied aircraft which were calculated to be more vulnerable to disruptions. Following the swift enactment of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act within two months of the 9/11 attacks, the US established the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Before the TSA’s creation, the number of air marshals in the US was just 33. This figure has grown into thousands of trained and armed personnel on board US flag carriers now.
When India reviews its laws and procedures amidst the ongoing uproar after the mid-air urination incidents, it must take into account that TSA’s air marshals now deal primarily with alcohol-induced misbehaviour on flights by US airlines. The mask mandate, which came with the Covid-19 pandemic, has also drawn air marshals into action on US flights notwithstanding the political sensitivities in the US associated with wearing masks. Since the US is not a soft state, members of their Air Marshal Service have shot unruly air passengers who had no connection with terrorism but were creating a nuisance: the TSA views such nuisance as threats to civil aviation. India, which has lately copied myriad US practices, especially in law enforcement, must adopt the TSA’s approach to unruly behaviour on Indian planes.
The worst – hardliners would say the best – example of zero tolerance by the TSA of on-board disruption occurred at Miami International Airport in December 2005. A passenger who suffered from bipolar disorder got up from his seat and tried to run out of a plane which was on the ground readying for take-off. Two air marshals on the aircraft ran after him and shot him dead although the passenger’s wife was screaming that her husband was mentally ill. A test case for India would be how it would handle such an incident if it tightens the country’s civil aviation behavioural rules.
KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Views are personal.
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