Airport arrests for the past 10 years

Request

I would like to request the following information relating to incidents involving disruptive airline passengers, recorded by your police force over the past 10 years:

1. The total number of recorded incidents involving disruptive airline passengers per year, for the past ten years (i.e., 2015–2024), broken down on a year-by-year basis to account for any variations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Of those incidents, the number in which alcohol was identified or flagged as a contributing factor, again broken down annually.

3. The number of disruptive passenger-related incidents that resulted in arrests, presented year by year.

This request specifically relates to incidents at airports or onboard aircraft within your jurisdiction, or otherwise handled by your force under aviation or public order legislation.

Response

Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt), to provide you the applicant with a notice which:

1. states that fact,
2. specifies the exemption in question and
3. states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

The following exemption(s) apply to the disclosure of the information:

Exemption applied - Section 12(1) Where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit

We hold information that falls under the scope of your request. However, locating/retrieving/extracting the information would exceed the cost limit set out by section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Reasons for applying exemption 12(1)

I approached the Performance Management Unit.

The initial search of this system returned over 320 custody reports regarding arrests at airports. To determine if these arrests were due to disruptive passenger-related incidents would require a manual review of the records. The data you are requesting is not recorded in an easily retrievable format and to provide the level of data you require would require a manual review of all the records. At a conservative 5 mins per incident this process would take over 26hrs.

Please also note: For the data prior to 2018, this data is held on an historic system no longer in use and cannot be readily extracted.  Manual reviews would be required to find the data within the system which would again trigger a s12 exemption.

In essence, we would have to review and manually check all relevant incidents to extract the level of detail of the cases that met the criteria of your request; this process would take much longer than 18 hours' work.

The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 provide that the cost limit for non-central government public authorities is £450. This must be calculated at the rate of £25 per hour, providing an effective time limit of 18 hours.

Guidance from the Information Commissioner to public authorities is that where one part of a request is reasonably estimated to exceed the appropriate limit then the authority is not obliged to consider or comply with the remainder of the request up to the point at which the appropriate limit has been reached. Please note point 30 of the below link:

https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf

Section 16: Providing advice and assistance

Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, my duty to provide advice and assistance to anyone making a request for information.

Although excess cost removes the force's obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded.

I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request neither does it bind South Yorkshire Police to any commitment that it will release information in such a manner in the future.

Question 1+2

I approached our Performance Review Unit for assistance with your request. An analyst within this unit has conducted a search of our Crime Management System - Connect which records complaints or allegations of those matters, which the Home Office specify should be recorded as 'crimes'. All our systems are designed and used first and foremost for Policing Purposes and have limited search capability. They provided me with the below in response and the following explanation regarding their search criteria:

It’s worth noting that Doncaster Sheffield Airport closed in November 2022.

Please see the Home Office Counting Rules (HOCR), Location of Crimes guidance set out below. Criteria has therefore been based upon the address of Doncaster Sheffield Airport.

“Where a crime is reported on an aircraft in flight and it is not clear where that offence occurred it shall be recorded as follows: 

For internal UK flights:  the force covering the aircraft’s departure location must record the crime. Offences reported to third party forces will be made subject of a crime-related incident and referred for crime recording to the force covering the airport of departure; 

For international flights arriving in the UK: classify as a crime related incident but do not record the crime.

For aircraft on international flights departing the UK: the force covering the airport of departure. 

Example: A passenger flies from a UK airport (in force A area) to China but stops in Paris to change planes.  The baggage is ticketed directly to the end destination and the passenger has no access to that  baggage during the stop.  On arrival at the end destination items have been stolen and this is reported to the Police at Force A. There is no evidence to show where the theft occurred. One crime to be recorded by force A. For all offences in transit reported on British registered aircraft anywhere in the world: the force covering the airport from which the aircraft last departed the UK. “

Criteria Used - Incident Created Date is between 01/01/2018 and 31/07/2025, SYP & crime only filter, Full Address is equal to Doncaster Airport, Doncaster Airport Doncaster, Doncaster Robin Hood Airport First Avenue Doncaster, Doncaster Robin Hood Airport Second Avenue Doncaster, Doncaster Sheffield Airport Doncaster, Doncaster Sheffield Airport Ake Ferry Road Doncaster, DONCASTER SHEFFIELD AIRPORT FIRST AVENUE DONCASTER, Doncaster Sheffield Airport Hayfield Lane Doncaster, DONCASTER SHEFFIELD AIRPORT TERMINAL FIRST AVENUE DONCASTER, DONCASTER SHEFFIELD AIRPORT, DONCASTER SHEFFIELD AIRPORT LIMITED BUCCANEER DRIVE DONCASTER, Doncaster Sheffield Airport, First Avenue Doncaster, DONCASTER SHEFFIELD AIRPORT,TERMSTALL LTD FOURTH AVENUE DONCASTER, DONCASTER SHEFFIELD AIRPORT., NATIONAL POLICE AIR SERVICE FIRST AVENUE DONCASTER