On Tuesday, November 9, the FAA released a new report outlining over $225,000 in fines for 10 unruly passengers.
These fines are stemming from a 0-tolerance policy put into place by the FAA back in January of this year to try and cut down on these incidents. So far the fines have totaled more than $1 million.
Several of the cases detailed in this report concerned passengers not wearing a mask on their flight. For example, a woman flying from Tampa Bay to Miami was fined $24,000 for ignoring several requests from the flight crew to wear her mask. She then shoved a flight attendant as she was being removed from the flight at the request of the pilot. Another woman on a flight from New Orleans to Baltimore was fined $24,000 for responding to a flight attendant’s request to wear a mask by punching and kicking him.
There was even a case from last year, with a woman on a December flight from Detroit to Salt Lake City fined $24,000 for refusing to wear a mask and then proceeded to yell and swear at the flight attendants, as well as threaten them. However, the biggest fine was given to a woman on a May flight from Austin to San Francisco for punching her husband and son, throwing trash at flight attendants and committing other unruly actions.
The FAA has said that the number of incident reports received has dropped sharply since they implemented this 0-tolerance policy. However, they don’t believe that the numbers have dropped enough, and they are continuing to think of ways to bring those numbers down even more. Those that received an enforcement letter from the FAA for committing these actions have 30 days to respond to the agency.
