SARASOTA – With videos circulating online of unruly passengers fighting with other travelers and in some cases flight attendants; the Federal Aviation Administration has a new policy you might want to follow.
Following President Joe Biden’s executive order mandating the use of face masks to be required on all public transportation; the Federal Aviation Administration has adopted a much stricter unruly passenger policy.
“Recently we’ve seen a disturbance increase of incidents where airline passengers have disrupted flights with threatening or violent behavior, said FAA Administrator Steve Dickson. “These incidents have stem from both passengers refusal to wear masks and from recent violence at the U.S. Capitol.”
The new procedures Dickson signed into order directs a stricter legal enforcement policy: The new policy states in part “Passengers who interfere with, physically assault, or threaten to physically assault aircraft crew or anyone else on an aircraft face stiff penalties, including fines of up to $35,000 and imprisonment.”
“Now historically, we have addressed unruly-passenger incidents using a variety of methods ranging from warnings and counseling to civil penalties,” said Dickson. “But these recent events show that a change in our policy is necessary.”
President and CEO of SRQ Airport Rick Piccolo says they haven’t had many incidents were passengers have assaulted a flight attendant. But the minor incidents they have had were resolved with the passenger complying with their mask mandate.
“It’s certainly a clear message and it’s one that they would put you in a no fly list as well, so there’s a lot of consequences to it,” said Piccolo.
The FAA has initiated more than 1,300 enforcement actions against unruly passengers over the past 10 years.
But in 2020 alone a total of 108 cases were for allegedly interfering with and assaulting flight attendants who instructed them to wear masks.
“My advice to people would be just behave yourself and you’ll have a really easy trip,” said Piccolo. “Wear your masks and things will be fine.”
The new policy goes into effect March 30th, 2021. According to the FAA website the previous policy, the maximum civil penalty per violation was $25,000. One incident can result in multiple violations.
