What i am interested is, when in the same situation as the vedio here, what will they do?
If staff is being hit, what is the norm? pin the aggreassor down (only if he is a big guys right)?
The airports are extremely well covered with security CCTVs then you would ever know. There are also plainclothed officers from the airport police to SATS/CIAS police to task force team (riot police) mingling with passengers. (I use to do that even way back then) and there are also one-way mirror rooms over looking passengers walking about.
In situations like a female attacks someone, a security or airport staff, most would try to defuse it from escalating to that sage if possible while calling for assistance and in worst case fend them off as the situation progresses...again depending on how aggressive she can get. Easy to think about it in hind sight or be reading a manual and some mock exercise on it but when the real thing happens..it is never "by the book"
In most situation there should be enough female staffers about too (given it is a airport crawling with people) and if not, any disturbance like this would initially be observed from a distance alerted by people on the ground and the relevant reinforcement personnel will already be dispatch to look into the situation.
If a woman attacker is deem to be very aggressive and clearly shows she is more then capable of causing hurt physically or with an object(s), sometime you can't be waiting till it gets that bad that you then react so you have to stray calm and defuse it as much as possible without you too resorting to violence on her. Again...if you do what is right and use appropriate action and if you now have to get physical meaning to subduing him or her to the ground for her own good and others safety then do it. As I said, the entire airport is well documented with cameras video taping the scene. Of course that could work for or against you depending on what you do to him/her in the course of subduing them. (use of necessary or excessive force)
This happens not just at airports but everywhere too and you notice sometime as the situation is being dealth with and defused, even the police would whip out a camcorder to film the entire situation. Women police officers are dispatch too in case they are dealing with women suspects or situations where women are involved.
And as you can see from the YouTube video which lasted for sometime, you don't see any authority or airport staff getting into the fray.,,,but close at hand as a precautionary. That is because, she has family members trying to calm her down. It also give the authority time to observe from a distance to see how best to handle it before they intervene. To see if it gets too much that they have to call in the relevant personnel to deal with it or her own family is able to calm her down and go off. So in the mean time they just hanging back and observe.
Throwing a hissy fit like a little demented brat like this...she lucky she is in HK. Like someone mentioned...if this was in London....good luck to her. I still suspect she is "playing it up" to the camera for one reason or another.