Opinion | Bad behavior is surging on flights. The U.S. needs to crack down on it. - The Washington Post

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A passenger on a JetBlue Airways flight bound for New York in February allegedly refused to wear a mask, hurled an empty bottle of alcohol, threw food, shouted obscenities at crew members, grabbed the arm of one flight attendant and struck the arm of another. In May, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant lost two teeth, according to a union leader, after a passenger who ignored in-flight instructions struck her in the face. And last month, crew members on a Frontier Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Miami resorted to duct-taping to his seat a passenger who allegedly groped two flight attendants and punched a third.

Those are among the incidents in what the Federal Aviation Administration has described as an unprecedented surge in bad behavior by passengers. Not enough is being done to crack down. So far this year, there have been more than 3,700 reported incidents of unruly passengers on planes (most of them involving fliers who refused to wear a mask), according to the FAA, which has initiated more than 600 investigations. There were, by comparison, just 146 investigations in 2019. “If we stay on that track, we’re talking about more reports this year of unruly passengers than we’ve had in the entire history of aviation,” Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, told Yahoo Finance. A recent survey of nearly 5,000 flight attendants by the association found that 58 percent had experienced at least five incidents this year and a shocking 17 percent reported experiencing a physical incident.

The numbers are tiny when viewed against the tens of millions of domestic air passengers who travel every month. But the potential for danger 35,000 feet up shouldn’t be minimized. The FAA in January launched a “zero tolerance” policy, but, as The Post’s Michael Laris and Lori Aratani reported, it seemed ill-prepared to back up its tough words with the organization, resources and efficiency needed to deal with the problem. Unruly behavior or interfering with flight attendant duties is against federal law — punishable by fines as high as $52,500 and up to 20 years in prison — but the FAA doesn’t have the authority to pursue criminal charges, and the protracted process for adjudicating civil cases makes it a struggle to get people to pay fines. The agency won’t say whether fines have been paid or how much people have paid.

In a letter last week urging airports to do more to help with unruly passengers — such as discouraging the sale of “to-go” alcohol that fuels much of the misbehavior — FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said there have been cases when assaults are reported but local authorities do nothing but interview the alleged culprit. The flight attendant’s association said there is little to no follow-up, including by the airlines, to individual complaints of misbehavior. That the Frontier Airlines crew was initially suspended for duct-taping that obnoxious passenger — until there was a public outcry — suggests this is a problem that needs to be taken more seriously.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) is working on a bill that would ban abusive passengers from flying for at least one year and bar abusive passengers from “trusted traveler” programs, such as TSA PreCheck and Global Entry. Legislation, though, only goes so far, and what is also needed is the simple recognition of how civilized people should behave. Said Ms. Nelson: “It’s almost as if we have forgotten how to interact with each other. There has to be a basic level of kindness.”

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Opinion | Bad behavior is surging on flights. The U.S. needs to crack down on it. - The Washington Post
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