Drunk on Ryanair Riga- Dublin - flight diverted.

Henry Ford III

I hope this hasn't been covered beforehand.

Crew did well but how did he get on the bus in the first place?

martinsvi

In what way crew did well? I see a bunch of brave passengers taking matters in their own hands whilst cabin crew is nowhere to be seen.. Of course once passengers have secured the plane, a tiny little kid in Ryanair uniform shows up to stop the filming .. I hope they would do better in an emergency!

Very poor effort from this crew, have seen quite a lot of pax going mad over different airlines over the years, never have I seen crew completely avoiding confrontation like this

VeVeX

I'd say he had more than alcohol taken.

corsav6

martinsvi wrote: »

In what way crew did well? I see a bunch of brave passengers taking matters in their own hands whilst cabin crew is nowhere to be seen.. Of course once passengers have secured the plane, a tiny little kid in Ryanair uniform shows up to stop the filming .. I hope they would do better in an emergency!

Very poor effort from this crew, have seen quite a lot of pax going mad over different airlines over the years, never have I seen crew completely avoiding confrontation like this

This is exactly how I seen it too. Some tool off his face, passengers take control of the situation and then the big hard man from Ryanair, who avoided the real problem, promptly tells a passenger to stop filming.
Poor show from Ryanair staff, well done to the passengers for taking control.

Tenger

I was told by a mate that EI actually checked pax at the boarding gate on Dublin-Riga flights. All alcohol was confiscated until landing and anyone drunk was prevented from boarding.

EDIT: To respond to martinsvi.....I know that my anecdote is from 3-4 years ago.

martinsvi

Tenger wrote: »

I was told by a mate that EI actually checked pax at the boarding gate on Dublin-Riga flights. All alcohol was confiscated until landing and anyone drunk was prevented from boarding.

your friend has an impressive memory, EI stopped Riga service ages ago..

To be fair, similar incidents are frequent on any route/airline, I think alcohol removal from tax free airport shops is long overdue

fits

martinsvi wrote: »

your friend has an impressive memory, EI stopped Riga service ages ago..

To be fair, similar incidents are frequent on any route/airline, I think alcohol removal from tax free airport shops is long overdue

really? I take over fifty flights a year, including around that part of the world, and have never seen an incident like that.

martinsvi

fits wrote: »

really? I take over fifty flights a year, including around that part of the world, and have never seen an incident like that.

It depends whether your flight goes to "that part" of the world with quite a lot of lads from "this part" of the world heading to or returning from their booze-cruise my I add.. although I don't think its cheap or popular anymore..

avhearld used to report unruly passenger incidents, but I think at certain point Simon (site keeper) got tired and stopped.

IATA says worldiwde there are 28'000 reported cases over 2007-2013 period*, but not every incident is reported, so the real number can be much higher

* - that averages about 11 registered incidents per day world wide..

lord lucan

Tenger wrote: »

I was told by a mate that EI actually checked pax at the boarding gate on Dublin-Riga flights. All alcohol was confiscated until landing and anyone drunk was prevented from boarding.

EDIT: To respond to martinsvi.....I know that my anecdote is from 3-4 years ago.

They done this a couple of years back on IBZ flights ex DUB too, lots of teens unable to handle their drink and knocking back vodka poured into burger king cokes upstairs in T2. Heard some horrendous tales from EI cabin crew.

dh1985

martinsvi wrote: »

It depends whether your flight goes to "that part" of the world with quite a lot of lads from "this part" of the world heading to or returning from their booze-cruise my I add.. although I don't think its cheap or popular anymore..

avhearld used to report unruly passenger incidents, but I think at certain point Simon (site keeper) got tired and stopped.

IATA says worldiwde there are 28'000 reported cases over 2007-2013 period*, but not every incident is reported, so the real number can be much higher

* - that averages about 11 registered incidents per day world wide..

How do you know the culprit was from "this part" of the world and was returning from their booze cruise. He may have been Latvian

martinsvi

dh1985 wrote: »

How do you know the culprit was from "this part" of the world and was returning from their booze cruise. He may have been Latvian

I'm not talking about this particular case, but the incidents I've witnessed myself. My comment has to be read in context with fits comment and my post before it

keith16

martinsvi wrote: »

In what way crew did well? I see a bunch of brave passengers taking matters in their own hands whilst cabin crew is nowhere to be seen.. Of course once passengers have secured the plane, a tiny little kid in Ryanair uniform shows up to stop the filming .. I hope they would do better in an emergency!

Very poor effort from this crew, have seen quite a lot of pax going mad over different airlines over the years, never have I seen crew completely avoiding confrontation like this

You base all of that on 90 seconds of smart phone footage? How do you know the PAX "secured" the aircraft?

That "kid" is just someone doing their job. If someone was filming you on an aircraft, would you not ask the crew to intervene?

I'd say Ryanair have absolutely countless situations like this and, what....90 seconds completely discredits their safety record and calls into question their ability to deal with confrontation?

martinsvi

keith16 wrote: »

You base all of that on 90 seconds of smart phone footage? How do you know the PAX "secured" the aircraft?

That "kid" is just someone doing their job. If someone was filming you on an aircraft, would you not ask the crew to intervene?

I'd say Ryanair have absolutely countless situations like this and, what....90 seconds completely discredits their safety record and calls into question their ability to deal with confrontation?

1) If you look closely you can see that footage consists of two parts, it is clear that the "event" lasted more than 90 seconds, at 1:13 we see an aisle with just the drunk standing, a second later, there's a passenger already engaging with him who wasn't on scene a frame before

2) looking at the weather forecast in Riga, I'm pretty sure the drunken buffoon didn't board the plane shirt-less. These situations are never sudden, they escalate, a professional crew will recognize the trouble brewing and will calm the passenger down before the shirt comes off

3) I read eyewitness reports that all cabin crew members ran to the front of cabin when situation started. If it's a procedure where they have to guard the flight-deck door, fair play, but does that mean, that any angry animal at the back of the plane can do what ever the f* he pleases?

4) about the kid doing his/hers job, didn't look like to be honest


btw I'm perfectly familiar and happy with the Ryanair's excellent safety record, but it shouldn't be brought up as a counter-argument every time we see something that might be substandard.. that's how records get ruined

punisher5112

Could have been a very hairy situation and lucky he didn't go for the door.

Its sad to see this stupid carry on but from looking at that I believe it was more then just drink.

Fair play to the passengers for stepping in.
The cabin crew would have been no match for that guys strength and are lucky there were guys on the plane which stepped in.

This is sad to see especially when you can hear kids on board and scary for all on board I would imagine.

DoYouEvenLift

Could he have actually opened the door there if he tried? It's not actually possible to open a door during flight is it? If it is, I'd be strapping myself in if someone was messing around near there

punisher5112

If ever in a situation like that and someone is out of control a fire extinguisher even a bag or coat could come in handy to keep some space and then pounce on them.

N64

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

Could he have actually opened the door there if he tried? It's not actually possible to open a door during flight is it? If it is, I'd be strapping myself in if someone was messing around near there

It's impossible to open the door when the cabin is pressurised.

cml387

The diversion was to Aarhus and the passenger was arrested.
As to the passenger videoing it... is it not possible that the unruly passenger could have been even more disruptive if he saw he was being filmed?
In which case the owner of the video was also endangering passenger safety.

Strumms

Re: the debate about alcohol at airports...

It must be very difficult, for any crew member to discern if somone is that out of it or drunk based on that couple of seconds of interaction of checking their boarding pass / passport, unless they have drank the bar dry and are falling out of their standing literally. Incidents like these gain a lot of publicity and you can see why, a very unpleasant situation for everyone, crew and pax alike but it seems the number of such incidents that you can simply put down to alcohol consumption in the grand scheme isn't great. So the clamour to close pubs and not to sell duty free at airports and peanalise normal people who are not going to go ape ****, be able to buy some liquor for themselves or as a gift or god forbid have a pint or two to kill time before a flight is senseless.

martinsvi

Strumms wrote: »

Re: the debate about alcohol at airports...

So the clamour to close pubs and not to sell duty free at airports and peanalise normal people who are not going to go ape ****, be able to buy some liquor for themselves or as a gift or god forbid have a pint or two to kill time before a flight is senseless.

I suppose that's a fair point, just because I never use the facility, doesn't mean it's not needed... should the security at airports be more proactive I wonder...

Tenger

Looking at the video, I wonder did the crew make a conscious decision to allow the pax to stay and take his aggression out on the seats rather than approaching and making the situation worse.....at least until they got closer to their diversion point? At least he was in the galley and not threatening the pax or crew....

FWVT

What I want to know is where is it written down that it is not allowed to film on Ryanair flights? Was the steward quoting some official rule in the Ts and Cs or did he just pull it out of his ...?

galwayjohn89

Obviously a lot cut out of the video so hard to tell exactly what really happened, but why would you film it? Idiotic thing to do in my opinion, was never going to help and could possible anger the drunk making it a lot worse.

punisher5112

Vuzuggu wrote: »

Obviously a lot cut out of the video so hard to tell exactly what really happened, but why would you film it? Idiotic thing to do in my opinion, was never going to help and could possible anger the drunk making it a lot worse.

How would it make it worse. Having footage would show exactly what happened.

The crew did nothing lets be honest and rightly so cause he would have kicked their a**.

Luckily there were passengers who were decent enough to step in which I find Is something less common these days more so on the streets but still they could have stayed seated and let someone else deal with it.

A tool like that should be forced to apologize to everyone and pay all airline costs and damages.

galwayjohn89

Drunk passenger could spot that he was being record, not appreciate it and get more aggressive.

As pointed out before, I wonder did the crew purposely do nothing. Maybe I missed something in the video but there didn't seem to be any urgent reason to try restrain him from the video.

Maybe I'm biased as I was on a flight, where there was a drunk passenger (far drunker) who when spotted being videoed did not take it well, ended up attacking the passenger and what was a minor incident at first ended up with 4 injured passengers and a bottled cabin crew.

Tenger

FWVT wrote: »

What I want to know is where is it written down that it is not allowed to film on Ryanair flights? Was the steward quoting some official rule in the Ts and Cs or did he just pull it out of his ...?

The passenger by accepting the T&C's agree's to "follow all instructions given to them by the Captain or the Capt's representatives" Standard airline disclaimer.

In addition some airline do have a mention of "prohibited to use recording equipment onboard with the express permission of airline XX"

gozunda

Can't quite make it out but the guy appears fairly heavily built - bare knuckle boxer perhaps? And drunk - ff to the individuals taking him on. Tbh the line of pax helping reminds me of the hysterical woman scene in Airoplane. Agree RA are very late to the party ...

FWVT

Tenger wrote: »

The passenger by accepting the T&C's agree's to "follow all instructions given to them by the Captain or the Capt's representatives" Standard airline disclaimer.

That's well and good AFTER the steward tells him to stop recording, but he said "you're not allowed take photos or video on Ryanair flights". Where is that written down is all I'm wondering?

Tenger

Well in attention to the "obey all instructions" I'm sure it is mentioned somewhere in their inflight mag or on their website when you book with them.

fryup

Tenger wrote: »

Looking at the video, I wonder did the crew make a conscious decision to allow the pax to stay and take his aggression out on the seats ....

the pax is that an abbreviation of something??

LXFlyer

pax = passenger

Standard abbreviation in the travel industry.