Originally Posted by
Baconroll
I'm afraid you're not allowed to do any hitting or punching. Just holding someone (or a limb) down. We are allowed to use reasonable force, but we are taught how to do this. We also know that any passenger who needs to be restrained will not co-operate much.
Oh, and we have proper cuffs, not those plastic cable ties that some other airlines have. Our cuffs hurt, even in training. I always come away with bruises whenever we've been training. Not because I'm a violent sort, of course, but the design of the cuffs and the methods we use to get compliance.
Back in the early 90's, I worked on a project near Murmansk and the cheapest route was Aeroflot via Moscow
. The final leg on the Krashalot 134 was notorious for drunks on the plane. On one occasion a spectacularly inebriated man came staggering into business class shouting loudly in Russian and pushing the cabin crew farther and farther down the aisle towards the flight deck. As he passed a large passenger in full military uniform, the guy stood up, launched one punch to the side of the drunk's head and laid him out cold (just like in the films). They then cuffed him with some webbng straps and laid him face down in the little mini galley area at the side for the rest of the flight.
I got the feeling that nobody was overly concerned about the legal niceties of 'reasonable force'.
Put it this way everybody in our cabin drank their orange juice very quietly for the rest of the flight.
