“If you cannot behave, you will not be flying on holiday with us.” A threat to a naughty child? Not necessarily. Adults too must choose between following airline rules and risking a dream trip. The sanction is harsher where it extends beyond one flight to a disruptive-passenger blacklist.
May airlines keep such lists and prevent future bookings? Should they? Could it even be their duty?
The carrier must ensure safety
International conventions and national law require passenger safety. This is sufficiently important to permit coercive measures, or refusal of further carriage, where a passenger threatens flight operations or others aboard.
What behaviour can justify refusal?
The particular carrier’s conditions identify relevant conduct. Most lists include disobeying crew, refusing mandatory checks, missing documents, aggression towards crew or passengers and substance use threatening others’ health and safety.
Less obvious reasons also appear: clothing inconsistent with air travel standards or causing fear, disgust or offence, and sometimes any person or baggage affecting another occupant’s comfort.
What about later flights?
Sanctions need not stop at one flight. Airlines reserve blacklisting where rules were breached and recurrence is suspected, excluding future travel. Usually other airlines are unaffected, but KLM and Transavia share a list: breaching one’s rules can bar both.
Duration depends on airline policy and seriousness. Carriers balance safety and customer retention, so not every breach produces a lengthy ban. Some last five or ten years; others are lifelong.
Notification practices vary too. Passengers usually learn immediately after the incident and decision. Later bookings may be cancelled before departure. Sometimes booking data cannot conclusively match the list because names coincide or differ across languages and alphabets. Final verification and refusal may occur only at check-in.
Is blacklisting a duty?
A preventive ban following one breach reduces disruption risk by deterrence and preventing recurrence. Preventing disruption is itself a carrier duty.
It can be difficult: someone previously compliant may behave badly unexpectedly. But conduct before departure indicating likely non-compliance requires preventive measures. The CJEU expressed this in LE v Transportes Aéreos Portugueses SA, C-74/19[1].
The judgment distinguishes carrier contribution, such as excessive alcohol service, or carrying someone already aggressive at check-in, from unforeseeable disruptive behaviour. In the first situation the carrier is liable to affected passengers; in the second it may avoid liability.
Does knowing that someone breached rules on an earlier flight itself justify expecting recurrence?
If so, the carrier should prevent further disruption, not merely have the option. Otherwise, after a repeat incident it must prove that past behaviour did not indicate recurrence and that all reasonable preventive measures were taken.
In D. SA v P. SA, C-411/23[2], the CJEU indicated that reasonable measures include not only responses after an event, such as reorganising flights to minimise delay after removing a disruptive passenger, but also preventive steps where likelihood was known to be high. A blacklist might be one example.
Passenger rights and free movement
Lists improve compliant passengers’ comfort, but are present and future refusals justified under passenger rights and freedom of movement?
EU rules permit refusal for a particular flight only on reasonable grounds, especially health, safety or inadequate documents[3]. Otherwise compensation liability arises.
Inappropriate clothing or possible discomfort raises doubts, as does exclusion from flights beyond the incident. These are harder to justify than an immediate safety breach.
EU free movement also argues against excessive sanctions. Air travel within the EU is increasingly common. Exclusion even from one airline, particularly a low-cost carrier, may discourage movement. Article 27 of Directive 2004/38[4] requires even public-order or safety restrictions to be proportionate and not based solely on previous convictions.
Blacklists inherently assume that restrictions follow previous punishment for misconduct.
[1] CJEU judgment of 11 June 2020, LE v Transportes Aéreos Portugueses SA, C-74/19, EU:C:2020:460.
[2] CJEU judgment of 13 June 2024, D. SA v P. SA, C-411/23, EU:C:2024:498.
[3] Article 2(j) of Regulation (EC) 261/2004 of 11 February 2004 establishing common rules on compensation and assistance in denied boarding, cancellation or long delay, repealing Regulation (EEC) 295/91 (OJ L 46, 2004, p. 1, as amended).
[4] Directive 2004/38/EC of 29 April 2004 on Union citizens’ and family members’ rights to move and reside freely within Member States, amending Regulation 1612/68 and repealing Directives 64/221, 68/360, 72/194, 73/148, 75/34, 75/35, 90/364, 90/365 and 93/96 (OJ L 158, 2004, p. 77).
