Airline passenger management system

Abstract

An airline passenger management system selectively and positively retains passengers within their seats, thereby eliminating potential airborne threats due to terrorists being able to move about the cabin of the aircraft. The system includes a seat belt latch assembly having a mechanism which selectively disables the latch release, thereby preventing the passenger from releasing his/her seat belt latch and restraining the passenger in his/her seat. The system further includes monitoring and control panels, with a monitoring panel in the passenger cabin and a control panel on the flight deck. These panels indicate the status of each passenger position, with the flight deck panel including a belt latch release control for each passenger position. The system provides for selective release of limited numbers of passengers at any one time during flight, and considers the risk level of each passenger according to statistics entered in a database prior to flight.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.