Were procedures enough during Southwest flight that ended in a death?

C.G. Wallace

Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2000 | 11:08 a.m.

SALT LAKE CITY - Flight attendants on Southwest Flight 1763 followed air safety procedures when they called on passengers to help restrain a violent passenger.

So why is 19-year-old Jonathan Burton dead?

Seemingly out of the blue, Burton tried to kick open the door of the cockpit on that Aug. 11 flight. By one account, he was screaming, "I can fly this plane," before eight passengers restrained him.

An autopsy report showing those passengers suffocated him has raised questions about how flight attendants should handle unruly passengers and how airlines should prepare employees for violence on board.

"Training is our No. 1 suggestion to combat this problem," said Dawn Deeks, spokeswoman for the Washington-based Association of Flight Attendants, which represents crews of 27 airlines. "Because the information the flight attendants need to deal with these situations has to be second nature."

But Stephen Luckey, chairman of the security committee of the Air Line Pilots Association, said industry training for handling disruptions ranges "from somewhat to none at all."

In the past five years, the Federal Aviation Administration has received more than 1,100 reports of air rage. And though the numbers peaked in 1997 with 307 reports of unruly passengers, FAA spokesman Paul Turk said those figures represent only what's reported to the agency.

Melissa Smith, president of the union that represents Southwest flight attendants, said air rage is still increasing, even in subtle ways.

"The general public has changed in a lot of ways, they demand more and expect more and aren't always happy and want someone to make them happy. You don't see the manners you used to see," said Smith, who has flown 22 years.

"Your road rage gets on the aircraft," she said. "I don't know how we're supposed to be trained at this point. Are we supposed to be trained as blackbelts?"

Luckey said that crews will need to call on the right passengers when things get out of hand.

"As far as a flight attendants restraining a very violent person, they need to learn to recruit passengers. A 110-pound flight attendant is not going to be able to restrain an enraged 200-pound drunk," he said.

Despite the close quarters of the 737, there are conflicting accounts of the short flight from Las Vegas to Salt Lake. The FBI is wrapping up its case and the U.S. Attorney's office in Utah has repeatedly said no charges will be filed against the passengers.

But an attorney hired by Burton's mother insists the Southwest flight crew wasn't trained properly to handle Burton's outburst.

"I'm certainly not going to say they shouldn't have restrained him," Kent Spence said. "But once he was restrained, the tables turned and the restrainers were out of control. Who was there to control them? Where were the authority figures from Southwest Airlines?"

Spence said Burton would have been able to breathe if he had been restrained with the plastic handcuffs that many airlines carry.

Southwest does not carry the "flex-cuffs" and believes the use of restraints would only escalate violate situations, spokeswoman Linda Rutherford said.

Some experts say airlines that do carry the plastic cuffs often don't teach flight attendants how to use them. But Luckey said they are a better alternative than brute force or using neckties and shoestrings to tie up a passenger.

Better still, he said, would be to train crews to spot problems before they begin.

"People very seldom go nuts all of the sudden," he said. "They go nuts in increments."