As if there were more problems than we already had, passengers from hell are now a thing. They attack flight attendants and toss food, alcohol, and throw their masks onto the ground. Delta Air Lines apparently has had enough.
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Delta sent two memos this week to employees, stating that it had requested its competitors to share their no-fly lists. This would help prevent poor passengers from disrupting other airlines. This year, the company has submitted over 600 names of prohibited passengers to Federal Aviation Administration.
These memos were sent on Thursday, the same week Delta participated through the industry trade group Airlines for America in a House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure hearing on air rage.
Kristen Manion Taylor (senior vice president for inflight services) stated in her memo that Delta has more than 1,600 people on the internal no-fly list. She said that Delta had been reviewing safety on its flights in the past few months, and would implement additional training and response measures onboard.
Taylor stated that we have also asked other airlines for their no fly lists to help protect employees in the industry. If a customer is able to fly with another airline, a list of banned customers won't work.
However, it is not clear how this information sharing would work. The Washington Post asked Delta if sharing internal lists should be done through the federal government or directly to other airlines.
According to the FAA this year, most of the unruly passengers are due to people refusing federal mask mandates. The agency has received 3,889 reports about unruly passengers since January. 2,867 of those were related to the mask mandate. These passengers were fined more than $1,000,000 by the FAA for bad behavior as of August.
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Lauren Beyer, vice president for security & facilitation at Airlines for America, stated that airlines sharing their lists between themselves poses legal and operational problems, according to the Post.
Peter DeFazio (Democrat of Oregon), chairman of the committee, pondered whether it was possible for the FAA create a database that contained information from no-fly airlines lists that could be accessed by all companies. The FAA didn't commit to the idea, but it told the Post it was meeting with airlines, unions and other stakeholders to determine what steps it could take to deal with unruly passengers.
