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 Travel & Outdoors | December 2005 
'Passengers Do Crazy Things,' Airline Pilot Says
 Thomas Frank - USA Today
| | In most cases, disruptive passengers have a physical or mental problem that clouds their judgment.
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American Airlines Capt. Gary Boettcher has seen passengers hollering that their plane was going to explode. He's seen them try to rush off the plane once the door was closed.
"Passengers do crazy things on airlines," says Boettcher, president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations. "You get a lot of (people) out there who don't understand ... the danger."
In the post-9/11 world, such behavior draws increasing scrutiny from flight crews. As the U.S. aviation system has become more security-conscious, it also has become less tolerant of strange behavior by passengers.
Those limits were exemplified Wednesday when two federal air marshals fatally shot a passenger who said he had a bomb on an American jet parked at Miami International Airport.
The passenger, Rigoberto Alpizar of Florida, did not have a bomb. A Miami-Dade police statement said Alpizar's wife told police her husband had bipolar disorder, which causes dramatic mood swings.
Although bomb threats on airplanes are rare, disruptions are not.
In 2004, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a record 302 fines against unruly passengers. That's in addition to more serious cases that are prosecuted criminally and less serious cases that flight crews don't report to the FAA.
"Our problem really is, where has civility gone in the airlines?" says Denis Breslin, another American Airlines captain and spokesman for the American pilots' union. "When someone steps outside those boundaries, there's only so much tolerance we can afford."
Breslin tells his crew before each flight that if a passenger acts up, get him the seat number. He'll call security officials on the ground to find the passenger's name and run a background check.
Even if the check turns up nothing, Breslin says he won't hesitate to declare an emergency and land the plane to have an unruly or erratic passenger removed.
"My personal view as a captain," Breslin says, "is that there is no tolerance for disruptive behavior on an airline."
Many agitated passengers turn out to be harmless. "But the problem is you don't know if someone is off their medication or a serious threat," says Tom McDaniel, president of the Southwest Airlines flight attendants' union. "Any time there's a threat on the aircraft, you can only assume it's the most serious threat."
McDaniel said flight attendants "have completely changed our procedures" since 9/11 and try to gauge the severity of a passenger threat and react accordingly. "We don't want anyone to overreact any more than we want someone to be harmed," McDaniel says.
If a passenger appears to pose a serious threat, flight attendants instruct other passengers to try to subdue him while pilots contact law enforcement, says John Black, head of the flight security committee of the Association of Flight Attendants.
Sometimes those efforts can be lethal. In 2000, Jonathan Burton, a passenger on a Southwest flight from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, died after passengers and crewmembers tried to subdue him. Burton, 19, had kicked a hole in the cockpit door and became violent. An autopsy showed he suffocated. No charges were filed.
In most cases, disruptive passengers have a physical or mental problem that clouds their judgment.
In March 2000, Peter Bradley, who suffered from a rare brain infection, pulled out a pocketknife and broke into the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines flight from Mexico to San Francisco. Bradley briefly grabbed the jet's controls before being subdued by passengers and the flight crew.
Dennis Debbaudt of the Autism Society of America says people with mental disabilities might benefit from telling authorities ahead of time if they're planning to go through tight security.
"You can let them know you have characteristics that might be misjudged," he says. "It may be too late during the heat of the moment to let authorities know you need an accommodation."
More than 2 million U.S. adults, or about 1% of the population 18 and older, have bipolar disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. The disorder causes swings between mania and depression, and medication is required to stabilize mood.
"Cognitive dysfunction is as much a part of bipolar disorder as mood," says Lydia Lewis, president of the Chicago-based Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.
Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, does not blame the marshals who shot Alpizar. "The marshals are just in a horrific situation, having to make split decisions," Fitzpatrick says.
Air marshal spokesman Dave Adams says using lethal force is "a last resort" to be used after passengers have disobeyed orders to stop threatening behavior.
Homeland Security Department policy says, "Deadly force may be employed only when an officer has probable cause to believe there is an imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to others."
None of nearly a dozen crewmembers and mental health experts criticized the air marshals.
"We as crewmembers love having federal air marshals on airplanes," says Robert Hesselbein, a flight captain and head of the national security committee for the Air Line Pilots Association. "It makes us feel safe."
Contributing: Mimi Hall and Rita Rubin |
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