Air Passengers With Dementia

David Amess Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) for allowing me to intervene briefly.

My wife was assaulted by a dementia patient on a British Airways flight exactly a year ago. She will not be pleased that I am raising the matter. I will not go into the precise details, but it seems so relevant after what my hon. Friend has said. This time last year we were all gathering here after the general election. One of our daughters who lives in America was graduating the day after the election, so it was a bit stressful to get out to Charleston, where she is. My wife had to go ahead and I followed, and it was all wonderful. My wife was recovering from breast cancer which, thank goodness, is all right, so she was in a pretty emotional state.

Because we had been told that there would be a hung Parliament, I thought we might be returning slowly together, but because there was a Conservative majority, I had to get back more quickly than my wife. Then the nightmare started. She took a night flight with British Airways. She was at the back of the plane with two empty seats next to her. The plane was delayed and eventually, after a kerfuffle, an elderly gentleman was brought on to the plane somehow and was seated next to my wife. I will put it like that. All I will say is that when everyone nodded off, she woke up and was assaulted. I am not going to enlarge on exactly what went on.

If Lord King were alive today, he would be horrified at the way that British Airways has dealt with this complaint. My wife is not someone to make a fuss, but I am. I will not let this matter drop; I shall deal with it through the small claims court. I made the complaint in June and did not get a decent reply from the executive chairman until 7 October. That is disgraceful.

The police, whom I eventually dealt with, said:

“You will be aware from our previous correspondence, that having liaised with British Airways, we were able to identify the passenger who is alleged to have assaulted”

my wife. They continued:

“We established that this male passenger is ninety years old and suffers from dementia. As part of our investigation we needed to ascertain if the suspect was fit to be dealt with by police, and further to that, to establish whether he would have an understanding of the allegation made against him.

We have since been provided with medical evidence that indicates the suspect’s dementia impacts on his ability to complete even basic mental tasks and that his dementia is likely to have impacted on his behaviour on the day of the assault.

In addition to the medical evidence, we were also able to refer to knowledge held about the suspect through previous police contact with him. The suspect has previously been reported as a missing person, and on that occasion, was located after members of the public reported him lost, disorientated and confused, wandering residential areas.”

The chairman of British Airways wrote:

“I hope you will appreciate that British Airways can only know details of a passenger’s medical condition if the passenger, or some other person acting on the passenger’s behalf, discloses this information to us. Having checked the booking record in relation to this passenger, no disclosure of any medical condition was made.

In the reports from the ground staff at Los Angeles and the cabin crew operating this flight, there was nothing in the passenger’s behaviour or bearing, other than he was obviously very elderly, to give any reason to believe that he suffered from any mental health issues. As such he was treated in the same way as any other passenger”.

It is absolute rubbish.

Then there is the final insult:

“Even had British Airways been aware of any medical condition affecting this passenger, it would have been inappropriate, and possibly in breach of data protection legislation, to disclose details to any other passenger. Additionally, we do not ordinarily consult with passengers as to who may be sat next to them during a flight.”

So there we are: my wife, at the back of the plane, is the mug. This is our national carrier—the best airline in the world, as far as I am concerned—and that is the quality of the response to someone who has been democratically elected. I therefore congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport on introducing the debate, and I am totally with him on his campaign.