The UK Government is considering plans to ban drunk and abusive airport passengers from flying it was revealed yesterday. Under the proposals, information about blacklisted passengers would be shared across airlines.
If they tried to book again, this would be flagged with the tour operator which could block them from travelling. At present, passengers who have been abusive or violent, usually fuelled by alcohol, can be banned by the airline they travelled with.
But they can just book with a different carrier and avoid detection – a loophole ministers are trying to close. A YouGov poll last month finding that three-quarters of the public backed the idea.
Phil Ward, chief operations officer of Jet2, said: “We would support a government plan for a formal scheme to share information on disruptive passengers across airlines and have been lobbying for this for some time.” Drunken, violent and abusive incidents on planes have been on the rise across the UK.
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In 2019, airlines reported 390 incidents involving drunk, violent or unruly passengers according to the Civil Aviation Authority By 2023 the numbers had jumped to 245 incidents in 2023 and has remained above 1,000 since.
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