Some flight attendants will start learning self-defense following a season of increasingly unruly and violent passengers.
News of upcoming self-defense training comes after a report by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday that says there were almost 100 cases of unruly passengers on airlines in the past week alone. The report adds there were over 3,000 reports of unruly passengers in 2021 so far. 2,605 of these cases were related to wearing a mask on airplanes and public transit.
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In an interview with NewsNationNew, spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendant Andrew Feldman says breaking up fights has become a daily part of a flight attendant’s job and that self-defense training should be required.
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“They’re voluntary, but we do think they should be mandatory,” Feldman said. And look, they’re coming back right at the right time because we are seeing unprecedented levels of unruly passengers in the air.”
Self-defense training for flight attendants is nothing new. The New York Times reported that Congress mandated self-defense training following the Sept. 11 attacks. Self-defense classes were closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, but TSA resumed classes in June 2021.
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