BadgerBoi

That would be the Americans then...

simons1

Well 11 pages on I'm still unsure what to make of this.

BA diverts a plane to the Azores, inconveniencing hundreds of customers on their outward and return journeys to Kingston. A 65 year old man is allegedly disruptive and has to be restrained and then deplaned.

A fellow traveller who became involved was also deplaned and amongst other things claims that the 65 year old was told by crew to defecate in his seat when he needed the toilet.

The police however say that the passengers "were not arrested and the matter was closed as far as they were concerned".

Surely a passenger who is such a danger that he needs restraining and the flight diverting warrants a stronger response than being told to be on his way?

There must be more to this than meets the eye. Either the passenger has got off extremely lightly, or BA has made a complete balls up of the whole thing.

Lounge Squatter

Any BA 777 Captain is going to be hugely experienced, with various links to medical and company contacts from the air.

I highly doubt this was a knee jerk reaction and would have been very carefully considered and done very reluctantly. The crew and BA would really not want to divert an aircraft for no reason, which would undoubtedly have cost them a fortune and resulted in severe disruption. People forget that contrary to popular belief on here, it's actually in the airline's interest for the schedule to run entirely as planned and published. They do not want to delay passengers and have aircfraft and crew out of position just for a laugh.

The bad guy here is the gentleman who decided he was more important than anyone else's holiday. After protesting about how poorly he was, what was he expecting BA to do once he refused to move. After the UA furore they were hardly going to manhandle him back to his seat were they? Maybe the crew dived into Lajes thinking he would get off in a few minutes and that they would have enough available duty time left to continue to destination. If the gentleman in question wasn't co-operative getting off then perhaps this resulted in a longer delay than expected and the crew timed out meaning it was more sensible to return to base and get a fresh crew than be stuck at Lajes.

Tafflyer

Haha. When younger I read Beano, now it's the DM when I need a laugh. Unbelievable though the numbers that take this "journalism" seriously.

Globalist

Well, to be honest "compensate for lost time" is a lose term. I would reply the same as BA did.

Lost time would have an undefined value. A lawyer's lost time might carry a different hourly value than an admin's lost time.

If there was compensation it would be based on liability and regulation (EU261). In this case I would argue it is an event outside BA their control and no payments are due. Duty of care would still apply, rebooking, sustenance and a hotel room if the delay is overnight.

It would be interesting to see people taking damages from the party who caused this but that seems unlikely too.

Globalist

simons1

Maybe you didn't read the press coverage then as I thought that was exactly did happen? According to the DM reports "he says he was 'ambushed' by six members of staff who tied him up by his hands and feet before allegedly dragging him back to his seat in economy"

My point here is that if the passenger was as dangerous as is made out, requiring the plane to be diverted at great expense and inconvenience, why wasn't he arrested for endangering an aircraft?

meester69

I'm not sure that's a successful argument. It seems that the decisions to (a) ground the plane and (b) fly back to London after disposing of the unwanted passengers are at least partly within their control.

My guess is the passenger is not aware of EU261, hence the rather vague request for 'lost time'. And certainly BA's Twitter staff are not going to spill the beans!

Lounge Squatter

The bit in bold that I've highlighted is where the flaw in the evidence lies. None of us know any of the above to be true, it is simply his (possibly exagerrated) side of the story in a sensationalist rag.

The only people who know exactly what happened are the crew and airline and they came to the decision they did based on that.

simons1

BA's Twitter team generally make it up as they go along so I doubt they would know the EC261 position.

I'd be surprised if there was any compensation here, unless it can be proved BA were negligent. Then again United refunded everyone on the Dr Dao flight after the humiliation they suffered.

China Clipper

Speaking of Dr Dao, who led a master class and just settled (already!) for an "undisclosed sum"... I think we're going to be seeing more and more of this. For many people, the potential downside to such stunts is, in relative terms, fairly trivial.

WorldLux

If passenger will change their game, then so will the airline and go after each and every passenger that delays an aircraft or forces them to divert because that passenger was drunk and/or unruly.

ppp909

They write what their readers want to read. My grandmother reads the DM and she will have found this chap guilty purely based on his appearance.

ILikePancakes

They were discussing this on the radio. Apparently once you've been restrained, you stay like that until the plane has landed. The crew are concerned what you are going to do, given they've had to restrain you in the first place. When it's got to that stage, you are potentially (or seen to be) a danger to either yourself, or others. Who knows what havoc might ensue when the restraints are removed 35k feet in the air...

Waterhorse

Indeed, and this should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a few moments. It is not a thing done lightly to deprive someone of their freedom, which is what is happening when they are restrained, it can only be done on the Captain's authority, as legally they are the only person with the power to do that on the aircraft. That authority derives from the ANO and the various conventions that govern air transport. The Captain's authority to restrain a person only exists in flight (that is the whole period between doors closed and doors open - not just the time actually in the air). The Captains authority essentially derives from the law of the land of the aircraft's country of registration and that "law" is only extant while airborne. Once on the ground the gentleman would have been handed over to the civil authority in the Azores, it is up to them to arrest or detain or charge or none of the above dependant upon their policy, law etc. It does not follow that because he was not arrested that the crew overreacted or acted incorrectly, one does not automatically follow nor should any inference be drawn from the two distinct and wholly separate events.

None of us here has heard all the evidence, or indeed ANY evidence, reports in the paper - any paper do not constitute sworn statements and are there to sell papers not to present facts or even be even handed, much depends on the political standpoint of the editorial team. There is no way we can judge what happened or whether it is correct, especially as few here have the background r understanding of the relevant laws and how they apply to this situation, yet many feel they can criticise one side or the other, or decide there was some conspiracy theory or claim to know what factors weighed upon the commanders decision.

corporate-wage-slave

If I were to summarise what I think the EC261 case here, yes you're right that Article 9 Right of Care would apply, and it was provided in LGW, though I've no doubt that it was a difficult evening for crew, ground agents and passengers.

From the "extraordinary circumstances" compensation aspect, given the little information I have read here (plus some Galley FM), I've no doubt BA will decline all requests, and they will have a strong argument on their side, after all the captain made an extraordinary decision for safety of his crew, passengers and aircraft. There is, however, another argument that can be made for compensation (which immaterially I don't agree with), namely the Article 5 clause which says this protection for BA kicks in if this condition is fulfilled: "which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken." In other words, a passenger could make the arguable case that BA's own actions lead to the diversion, and that given the passenger was fully tied down, he was unlikely to cause a problem if the aircraft continued to Jamaica. So the passenger would have to convince the court that continuing to Jamaica was reasonable - rational in legal terms. In the event of a "fine line" argument, the Regulation has a consumer protection bias. I would not like to call this, I suspect the passenger might win at appellate level, or even at Small Claims given the right lines of argument. I am not a lawyer.

I've had one experience of this some time ago, where I got diverted to Spain due to a disruptive passenger. The Guardia Civil and the Policía Nacional decided not to prosecute the passenger and some months later I found out why: the passenger was questioned and gave a very different version of events face to face to the police officers. The purser gave her version of events to the ground agent, who wasn't a BA employee, and then sent in a fuller version by email. The three versions of events didn't tally at all (which is scarcely surprising) and the event mainly took place over France. So the police didn't arrest the disruptive passenger and no charges were ever bought. The precise sequence of events was key here. The passenger talks to the police and makes a lucid case, they have a statement from the ground agent, the two didn't tally. No arrest made, passenger leaves the airport and then the country shortly thereafter but is told they may be charged at a later time. Email comes in, it doesn't fit in with the interview or the ground agent's statement, plus it isn't clear that something bad had happened in Spain. So from the police perspective, the problem has gone away.

So in short, I can very much understand that the captain genuinely felt the best thing to secure his aircraft was to offload the disruptive passenger - that's not a legal process, it's a safety judgement. The police will not necessarily see that safety judgement as important, merely whether a crime was committed and whether it is worthwhile prosecuting the alleged perpetrator(s). Two different things, they won't always coincide.