Cooped-up people are piling into airline seats, and bringing their fists with them. With planes flying again, cabin incidents are soaring.
The FAA said on Monday, May 24, 2021 (here), “Since Jan. 1, 2021, the FAA has received approximately 2,500 reports of unruly behavior by passengers, including about 1,900 reports of passengers refusing to comply with the federal facemask mandate.”
Huh. That was predictable. Especially the business about masks.
After recounting in detail two assaults against flight attendants ($15,000 fines), and three incidents of refusing to comply with flight attendants ($15,000, $10,500, and $9,000 fines), the FAA press release said, “Federal law prohibits interfering with aircraft crew or physically assaulting or threatening to physically assault aircraft crew or anyone else on an aircraft.”
Eh? People have to be told that??? Guess so, now.
Last Sunday (May 23, 2021), a Southwest flight attendant on a trip from Sacramento to San Diego got two of her teeth knocked out by an unruly female passenger, who now faces felony charges, and is banned for life by the airline. Following that incident, a union leader said (here), “No passenger should be removed from one flight only to be permitted to board the very next Southwest Airlines flight after a non-compliance incident.”
What? They are? That one should be a no-brainer. Make ’em walk home, like this guy. (You can find tons of other videos on YouTube of unruly passengers, airport brawls, etc., because there’s a lot of bad behavior going on right now.)
This problem has been around for years, of course. There’s just more of it now — way more. Like a year’s worth of incidents in two months, as people come out of Covid hibernation and begin boarding planes again. And flight attendants are bearing the brunt of it.
Basically, they’ve been put in the same position as retail workers: As frontline workers with face-to-face contact with the on-edge public, they’ve been tasked with enforcing their employers’ mask policies, which in turn have been mandated by government and public health officials.
Of course, the GOP’s war against masks hasn’t helped. To their followers, already inclined to do as they please, that operates as a kind of permission to ignore the rules. In Alaska, where flying sometimes is the only practical means of transportation, a GOP state legislator who made a point of repeatedly violating mask rules was banned by Alaska Airlines. Her behavior was especially egregious because she was very public about it, and intended to inspire others to follow suit.
Let her drive, swim, or hike between the state capitol and her home. She had it coming.
Now that airplanes are a form of mass transportation, it’s inevitable that airport staff, crew, and passengers will encounter drunks, people on drugs, and folks just having a bad day. That’s the stuff of everyday life. In the past, the FAA, airlines, and airports managed these problems with security measures, fines, and flying bans. But willful defiance of rules designed to keep others safe, and violent assaults on staff and other passengers, call for different measures.
These are bad people. And when fines and flying bans aren’t enough to deter them, it’s time to start throwing them in prisons.