An “unruly” teen has been arrested in connection with an assault aboard an Air Canada flight, an incident that forced the plane to make an unscheduled stop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, RCMP said.
The flight was en route from Toronto to Calgary on Jan. 3, when a teenage passenger assaulted a relative aboard the same flight, the RCMP said in a press release. Airline employees and passengers were able to restrain the youth following the altercation.
Air Canada Flight No. 137 touched down at Winnipeg’s Richardson International Airport at approximately 12:20 p.m., the RCMP said.
A 16-year-old boy from Grande Prairie, Alberta, was subsequently arrested by RCMP officers and was taken to hospital for “medical evaluation.” The name of the youth cannot be released under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
RCMP said the adult passenger was treated on scene for minor physical injuries. No other passengers on the flight required medical assistance.
The decision to divert the flight to Winnipeg due to the in-air assault follows federal protocol. According to the Government of Canada website, it is “illegal to behave in a manner that is threatening to crew members and passengers.”
If threatening behaviour occurs after departure, “the aircraft may be diverted,” the site says. “The police will be asked to meet the aircraft upon arrival and the person could be arrested, charged, and prosecuted.”
Incidents of unruly passengers are on the rise worldwide. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported a global increase in such incidents last June, saying that while physical abuse remains “very rare,” such in-air altercations have increased 61 percent since 2021.
This “alarming” increase amounts to one violent incident every 17,200 flights, the IATA said in a press release.
Most incidents classified as “unruly” are due to verbal abuse or intoxication, with one incident reported for every 568 flights in 2022, up from one per 835 flights in 2021, IATA figures show.
“The increasing trend of unruly passenger incidents is worrying,“ IATA Deputy Director General Conrad Clifford said in the press release. ”While our professional crews are well trained to manage unruly passenger scenarios, it is unacceptable that rules in place for everyone’s safety are disobeyed by a small but persistent minority of passengers.”
Non-compliance incidents dipped after COVID-19 mask mandates were removed on most flights, the IATA noted, but the frequency of such incidents began to rise again in 2022 and ended the year 37 percent higher than in 2021.
Dutch carrier KLM has also reported a large increase in unruly passengers, saying such incidents have risen 100 percent since 2019.
The airline, in a press release last month, said an average of 30 unruly passengers were recorded each month in 2023, compared to an average of 15 in 2019. Approximately 60 percent of the incidents took place on board while the remaining 40 percent occurred in the departure hall, the press release said, noting that alcohol played a major role in many of the incidents.
While Transport Canada hasn’t shared unruly passenger statistics, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States reported a substantial surge of incidents in 2021. The FAA received reports of 5,973 incidents that year, a 492 percent increase over 2020. Incidents have since dropped but still remain two times higher than they were pre-pandemic.
