When a passenger's behavior on a plane gets out of hand, much of the power on how to deal with it falls to the air crew.
They are the ones making the call where the behavior falls on the International Civil Aviation Organisation's four-tier system ranging from level one's "suspicious behavior" (something that needs to be monitored) to level four's "life-threatening behavior" warranting an immediate airplane diversion.
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In cases where the plane has not yet taken off, flight attendants have sometimes also made the call to ask someone to leave based on complaints or arguments between two passengers — a situation that often results in accusations of discrimination.
Related: American Airlines passengers pulled off plane over body odor complaint sue
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Leaked staff manual shows how American Airlines tweaked its policy
The most high-profile recent incident occurred last spring when the three Black men who had been asked to leave a plane after another passenger complained of body odor sued American Airlines (AAL) over "blatant and egregious racial discrimination." The three men did not know each other and were sitting in completely different parts of the plane but each was singled out and asked to leave.
In September, Delta Air Lines (DAL) also had an incident in which a Korean-American passenger complained about a flight attendant who asked why he and his wife could not speak Chinese and was instead the one asked to leave the flight.
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Amid the bad publicity such incidents bring to the airline, American Airlines updated staff guidance on when passengers can be asked to leave — according to an in-flight manual first published by aviation website View From The Wing, the new guidance specifically states that any "non-safety and non-security concerns" should be resolved in a way that "avoid passenger removal."
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Aim is for rules that both address customer concerns and keep all customer travel intact'
"Any non-safety and non-security related concerns should originate from customers only, not from team members," the in-flight manual reads further. "[...] That means groups across the operation work together toward a resolution that both addresses the customer concern and keeps all customer travel intact."
The manual also says that American Airlines wants to "cultivate a sense of community and provide a travel experience where everyone feels welcomed." The re-evaluation is meant to "provide additional clarity [...] at situations that involve customer acceptance and those that may result in the removal of passengers."
The memo goes on to say that in situations where a safety risk is suspected (numbers from the FBI show that there has been a spike in dangerous behavior aboard planes in recent years), a flight attendant who cannot resolve the issue alone needs to ask for the help of a second flight attendant before making the call to ask the passenger to leave.
"Every day and on every flight, we strive to cultivate a sense of community and provide a travel experience where everyone feels welcomed," American Airlines said in a statement shared with TheStreet. "With that as our guide, we regularly review our policies, practices, and protocols and make updates to ensure we're delivering for our customers throughout their journey with us."
If a resolution isn't possible, the captain needs to be the one to contact the airline's Contract Resolution Official prior to the passenger being asked to leave. This guidance is exclusively for situations that occur before the plane has taken off (or in the rare instances where incidents occur after a plane is taxiing after landing), as the decision to divert a flight that has already taken off over security concerns ultimately rests with the captain.
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