Cases of unruly passengers are soaring, and so are fines

Four people are facing nearly $70,000 in civil fines for clashing with airline crews over mask requirements and other safety instructions on recent flights, part of what the Federal Aviation Admin- istration called a “disturb- ing increase” in the number of unruly passengers who have returned to the skies with the easing of pandemic restrictions.

The latest round of proposed fines, which passen- gers have 30 days to contest, came just days after the FAA said that it had received more than 1,300 unruly-passenger reports from airlines since February. In the previous decade, the agency said, it took enforcement actions against 1,300 passengers total.

“We will not tolerate inter- fering with a flight crew and the performance of their safety duties,” Stephen Dick- son, the administrator of the FAA, said on Twitter on May 3. “Period.”

None of the passengers now facing fines were iden- tified by the FAA, which this year imposed a zero-tolerance policy for interfering with or assaulting flight attendants that carries a fine of up to $35,000 and possible jail time.

One of the passengers, a woman who was traveling from the Dominican Republic on a Jetblue flight bound for New York on Feb. 7, refused to comply with instructions to wear a mask aboard the plane, hurled an empty liquor bottle, threw food and shouted obscenities at flight attendants, according to the FAA.

The woman grabbed the arm of a flight attendant and hurt her arm, and she struck the arm of another flight attendant twice and scratched that crew member’s hand, causing the flight to return to the Dominican Republic, the FAA said last week. It recommended a fine of $32,750 for the woman.

So far, the FAA has identified potential violations in about 260 of the 1,300 cases referred by airlines, a spokesman for the agency said in an email Sunday. Officials have begun enforcement actions in 20 of the cases and are preparing a number of additional enforcement actions.

In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, there were 142 enforcement actions that stemmed from unruly passengers, according to the FAA. There were 159 in 2018, and 91 in 2017.