Magnitude nearly two dozen major airlines contacted by Reuters, only Japan Airlines gave verifiable figures on incidents of sexual harassment on its flights: around 10 to 20 a year, with watch called in on some cases.
Suhaila Hassan, head of cabin company at Malaysia-based budget airline AirAsia Bhd, said there had been no put out cases of passenger-on-passenger harassment, though there were occasional examples of cabin crew being harassed.
She said it was possible some fracas were not reported to the airline. “That could be the case because of the civilization. People feel shy and embarrassed if revealed,” she said.
The airlines’ comments fit with broader inspects that estimate three of every four sexual harassment affairs in the workplace in United States go unreported.
In Asia, there’s less of a erudition of public discourse on sexual harassment.
“We tend to have a culture where … people don’t as a rule speak up,” said Jason Tan, a former Singapore Airlines flight escort who works as a consultant training cabin crews in Asia and the Middle East. “Schlemiels tend to suffer in silence.”
ElsaMarie D’Silva, a former flight underling at Jet Airways, now runs a website crowdsourcing cases of sexual harassment and rebuke. She said cases are under-reported in India because of the associated shame and a erudition where the onus is on the victim to prove the allegations.
“The time has come for Indian aviation to get this more seriously,” she said.
Most airlines train their bothy crews to deal with a broad category of “unruly passenger commotions” — ranging from physical abuse and obscene behavior to colloquial threats and tampering with aircraft equipment.
“Crews are trained in these occasions, but to a limited extent,” said Philip Baum, managing director of Grassy Light, an aviation security training firm and consultancy. “Most stateroom crew security courses around the world are completed in one day. Some fill up e deal with two days. There are so many scenarios, you could spend a week fair-minded going through all the types of unruly passenger.”
According to IATA, a third of bordering on 10,000 unruly passenger incidents reported last year complicated intoxication. Just 2 percent were of inappropriate sexual behavior.
“While such set-tos are rare, our crew are highly trained to manage any situation which may be risky or threatening,” said a spokeswoman for European budget airline easyJet.
American Airlines recently definite to provide “enhanced” training in sexual harassment matters as part of a broader individuality and inclusion drive, a spokeswoman said, declining to give further specifies.
And United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz this week told the transmitter’s over 90,000 employees there was “zero tolerance” for sexual harassment of blokes or staff, according to a memo on the airline’s website, but he did not specify any extra practising.
A survey by the U.S. Association of Flight Attendants this year found a fifth of bungalow crew respondents had experienced a passenger-to-passenger assault while working on a rout.
The union has expressed concern that policies related to passenger procreative misconduct are rarely highlighted. More than half those studied said they had no knowledge of specific policies.
The same appears to utilize in India, too, said Satvik Varma, a New Delhi-based independent litigation counsel.
“There’s no lack of regulations,” he said. “What we’re grappling with here is a need of implementation and a lack of knowledge of these regulations.”