WASHINGTON (KNX) — A "zero tolerance" policy introduced during the pandemic to prevent unruly passengers from causing conflicts on airplanes is now permanently in effect.
The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday announced that its zero tolerance policy for dealing with unruly passengers is here to stay. The announcement comes just days after a federal mask mandate for mass transportation was repealed.
"Behaving dangerously on a plane will cost you; that's a promise," Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen said in a statement. "Unsafe behavior simply does not fly and keeping our Zero Tolerance policy will help us continue making progress to prevent and punish this behavior."
The FAA implemented the policy on Jan. 13, 2021 after seeing a disturbing increase in incidents of passengers disrupting flights with threatening or violent behavior.
Under the policy, the FAA can directly issue fines to any passenger who assaults, threatens, intimidates, or interferes with airline crew members. Previously, the agency would sending warning letters or suggest counseling before fining passengers.
The FAA has civil authority that allows it to impose fines up to $37,000 per violation for unruly passenger cases. One incident can result in multiple violations.
The FAA says its zero tolerance policy has helped reduce the incident rate more than 60 percent since record-highs in early 2021.
Incidents of bad behavior in the skies included passengers being duct-taped into seats or restrained with zip ties, trying to open the exit door, assaults on flight crew and other passengers, throwing luggage, sexual harassment, and more. In 2021, the FAA recorded nearly 6,000 reports of unruly passengers and imposed roughly $5 million in fines.
So far this year, the FAA has received 1,233 reports of unruly passengers. The agency has investigated 370 of those reports, initiated 192 enforcement cases and referred 80 cases to the FBI for criminal review. For the week ending April 10, 2022, there were 3.8 reported incidents per 10k flights, according to the agency.
Many of the incidents have been tied to conflicts over the federal mask mandate, which required passengers to wear face masks on airplanes and in airports. The mandate was struck down this week, allowing travelers to finally ditch the masks after 14 months.
In addition to imposing fines, the FAA is working with the Transportation Security Administration to revoke special screening privileges from unruly passengers.
Under the partnership, the FAA will share information of passengers facing fines for unruly behavior with TSA who may remove the passenger from TSA PreCheck screening eligibility, which is a privilege reserved for low-risk travelers. The TSA will also share information to help the FAA identify and locate unruly passengers to serve them with penalty notices.
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