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Once upon a time, passengers on commercial airliners were on their best behavior. Nowadays, not so much.
The 20 August edition of The Wall St. Journal reports that, so far this year, the Federal Aviation Administration has initiated more than triple the number of investigations into bad passenger behavior than it did in 2020 and quadruple the number in 2019.
Earlier this year the agency adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward unruly passengers, replacing its prior policy of warnings or counseling letters; now fines are levied. The FAA can’t pursue criminal charges against passengers, but it can bring civil penalties, and has so far racked up more than $1 million in such penalties.
Individual fines have ranged from $7,500 to $45,000. So far this year, the agency has received about 3,900 reports of passengers behaving badly or otherwise violating safety rules; 2,900 of those were rooted in failure to comply with the federal mask mandate that is now set to run through mid-January of 2022.
A survey of almost 5,000 flight attendants across 30 airlines, conducted by their union, showed that some 85 percent of them have dealt with unruly passengers this year. The attendants say that the incidents often start with defiance of the mask or alcohol rules, or from annoyance over flight delays and cancellations, and escalate into threats made, obscenities hurled, and physical assaults, sometimes against fellow passengers.
More than 50 percent of those surveyed reported dealing with more than five such incidents so far this year, and 17 percent said the incidents included physical altercations.
Trends Journal reported on this phenomenon as an aspect of the COVID War, in 3 August’s “COVID BLUES: NO FUN TO FLY.”
Airline and union officials expressed something akin to an understanding of passengers’ tensions by acknowledging that, with more people flying now after prolonged isolation, airlines are dealing with increased demand, scheduling conflicts and staffing issues, all of which contribute to passenger anxiety.
Then again, perhaps airline passengers’ bad behavior is just another example of the coarsening of our culture.