IATA Pushing Revisions to Unruly-Passenger Rules

A rare, once-a-generation diplomatic conference is planned for next month in a bid to update international law on dealing with unruly passengers. Likely to be held in Montreal, Canada, the headquarters city of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the diplomatic conference is the culmination of a five-year process to revise the 50-year-old Tokyo Convention, a process triggered by an International Air Transport Association (IATA) proposal in 2009.

Reported unruly-passenger behavior incidents have increased dramatically since records started to be kept by IATA in 2007, passing 6,000 incidents in 2011, the most recent year for which IATA has disclosed data. In 2008, barely 1,000 incidents were reported to their Safety Trend Evaluation, Analysis & Data Exchange System (STEADES) database.