A passenger is a person who travels in a vehicle, but does not bear any responsibility for the tasks required for that vehicle to arrive at its destination or otherwise operate the vehicle,
Crew members (if any), as well as the driver or pilot of the vehicle, are usually not considered to be passengers. For example, a flight attendant on an airline would not be considered a passenger while on duty and the same with those working in the kitchen or restaurant on board a ship as well as cleaning staff, but an employee riding in a company car being driven by another person would be considered a passenger, even if the car was being driven on company business.
Legal status
In most jurisdictions, laws have been enacted that dictate the legal obligations of the owner of a vehicle or vessel, or of the
driving or
Aviator of the same, towards the passengers. With respect to passengers riding in cars and vans, the driver may owe a duty of care to passengers, particularly where the passenger's presence in the vehicle can be seen to "confer some benefit on the driver other than the benefit of his or her company or the mere sharing of expenses".
[William Statsky, Essentials of Torts (2011), p. 339.] In other situations, however,
may limit the ability of passengers to sue the driver of the vehicle over an accident. Many places require cars to be outfitted with measures specifically for the protection of passengers, such as passenger-side
. With respect to passengers on commercial vehicles or vessels, both national laws and international treaties require that the carrier act with a certain standard of care. The number of passengers that a vehicle or vessel may legally carry is defined as its
seating capacity.
[Lee Jr., Lawrence: Railway economics and passenger sociology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).]
Terms
Revenue passenger
A
revenue passenger is someone who has paid a transport operator for her or his trip. That excludes non-paying passengers such as airline employees flying on free or nearly-free passes, babies and
children who do not have a seat of their own, etc. However, passengers who paid for their trip with a frequent-flyer program mileage award are usually included.
This term is used in the transportation industry, in particular in traffic measures such as revenue passenger kilometer (RPK) and revenue passenger mile (RPM).
Revenue passenger kilometres
Revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) and
revenue passenger miles (RPMs) are measures of traffic for an
airline flight,
bus, or
train calculated by multiplying the number of revenue-paying passengers aboard the vehicle by the distance
.
On long-distance buses and trains (and some planes), passengers may board and disembark at intermediate stops, in which case RPMs/RPKs have to be calculated for each segment if a careful total is needed.
Revenue passenger miles can be considered the basic amount of "production" that an airline creates. The revenue passenger miles can be compared to the available seat miles over an airline's system to determine the overall passenger load factor.
No pax
In transportation, a "no pax" trip is a trip without passengers.
For example, no-pax flights are
Air cargo,
Ferry flying and positioning flights.
Similarly, with a public transit bus it can be used at the beginning and end of a driver’s work shift to/from the bus terminal, or in the non-commute leg of a
commuter bus service.
In such cases, the main display signs on the front and curbside of the bus typically display a message such as “no pax” or “out of service” (sometimes abbreviated as “O/S”).
British railway passenger train categories
In British railway parlance, passenger, as well as being the end user of a service, is also a categorisation of the type of
rolling stock used.
In the British case, there are several categories of
passenger train,
which include:
-
Express passenger, which constitutes long distance and high speed railway travel between major locations such as ports and cities.
-
Semi-fast express passenger, a type of service that is high speed, though stops at selected destinations of high population density en route.
-
Local passenger, the lowest category of British passenger train, which provides a service that stops at all stations between major destinations, for the benefit of local populations.
External links
