Airline official warns about risks of 'violent viral flight videos'

Recording and publishing incidents onboard aircrafts, such as the recent United airlines one where a doctor was forcefully removed from the plane, can create safety risks for the aviation industry, British Airways' director of safety and security Tim Steeds, said.
Steeds said that his wife, who is a flight attendant at United, was "highly embarrassed" with what was shown in the press. He told the audience at the World Aviation Safety Summit that press activity and social media often create safety risks for the aviation industry.
A video of a man being removed from a United airlines flight went viral on Monday. The man is reportedly a doctor. The flight was overbooked, so the staff asked four people to volunteer to get off. However, when no one volunteered, a staff member randomly picked him. He declined and said he had patients to tend to, ultimately being dragged across the cabin aisle, bursting his lip open.
Steeds gave several examples of what are considered safety risks for airplanes, including individual biases, political influences and press activity.
"There has been a great example of press activity last night with the United airlines passenger being removed from the flight. It's not just press activity anymore, is it? It's Twitter and videos. You have an incident on board, you can see it before the aircraft lands. It's a real issue for us as an industry," Steeds said.
"More and more airlines are getting WiFi connected, so customers can enjoy doing work at 30,000ft, but some of them can be busy taking videos of procedures on aircrafts and transmitting them. And worse, if there's an instance on board, you can read about it and see it on the news before the aircraft's landed. I think press activity and interconnectivity is a real issue that we don't have the answer for."
Steeds personally thinks that the fact the man on the United Airlines flight was a doctor was not relevant. He said factors as such create individual biases.
"Does it make a difference whether he was a doctor? Personally, I don't think so. I mean it could've been a grandmother going to see her grandson. So, individual bias is that you might think you shouldn't do it to a doctor, but you can do it an old lady. We all need to be aware of our bias," Steeds said.
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com