To combat unruly customers, Korean Air has allowed flight attendants to carry stun guns on board, and will be hiring more male crew members.South Korea has recently experienced far more violent incidents on flights; the numbers have more than tripled in the last five years. The most recent incident that sparked the change in policy happened on December 20th. An unruly passenger had consumed two and a half shots of whiskey during flight and became violent. He ultimately injured several crew members and even another passenger from Vietnam who was aboard the flight.U.S. singer Richard Marx took to twitter to complain about how the airline handled the incident. He was also aboard the flight, and claimed to have helped restrain what he called a "psycho" passenger aboard the plane. He further criticized the airline for being "ill-prepared" and "ill-equipped" to handle such a situation.
Hey @KoreanAir_KE if this POS was blacklisted 4 same behavior in September why was he onboard? And served booze? https://t.co/2oKsOIvA2c
— Richard Marx (@richardmarx) December 23, 2016
W respect to the #KoreanAir crew, who are only as good as they're trained, think if this despicable excuse for a human had been a terrorist.
— Richard Marx (@richardmarx) December 24, 2016
Korean Air President Chi Chang-hoon gave the following statement for the press:
"While U.S. carriers have taken stern action on violent on-board behavior following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 (2001), Asian carriers including us have not imposed tough standards because of Asian culture."
The passenger, who was only identified by his last name Lim, appeared on Monday for questioning. He told police that, while he was sorry for his actions aboard the flight, he could not remember exactly what happened.Korean Air, in response to Marx's criticism, sent a thank you letter to his management agency for his assistance.What do you think about these new standards? Do you think stun guns should be carried by all flight staff? Let us know in the comments below!