Are you allowed to take pictures on planes? Yes and no

On a recent American Airlines flight from Santiago, Chile, to Dallas, Natalie Root had a front-row seat for an unpleasant confrontation.

The aircraft she boarded happened to be a new Boeing Dreamliner, and her friend, an aviation buff, wanted to snap a few pictures of the plane’s interior as it taxied down the runway. Big mistake.

“A flight attendant saw him because he had his flash on his cellphone camera, and she demanded that he immediately delete the picture,” says Root, a retired social studies teacher from Arlington, Virginia. “She accused him of photographing crew members, which he was not doing. She said it was a federal rule violation. Another attendant threatened to have the captain turn the aircraft around.”

Root’s friend erased the photos and was allowed to fly to Dallas, but the event left him shaken and humiliated, she says.

A review of my advocacy case files suggests that incidents such as the one Root witnessed are happening more often. It’s been a year since the David Dao debacle played out on social media, but it seems to have triggered a reflexive response against any passenger who dares to point their camera inside an airplane. There’s no federal law that prohibits in-flight photography. Instead, crew members invoke a regulation, 49 U.S.C. 46504, that forbids passengers from interfering “with the performance of the duties of the member or attendant or lessening the ability of the crew member to perform those duties.”

That’s been broadly interpreted to mean: Obey your flight attendants.