Category Archives for Passengers.
The FAA usually sees 100 – 150 cases of bad inflight behavior filed with them each year. Already this year there have been 2500, 1900 of which have deal with refusal to wear a mask. Most inflight disturbances don’t make it to the FAA.
We’ve seen a real increase in inflight conflicts, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. There are generally five reasons why we’re heading towards a new peak.
According to the grandmother of one of the passengers fighting, “[t]he guy in the black t-shirt and his girlfriend were fighting” after asking that passengers not kick the back of her granddaughter’s seat. There was cursing that escalated to “snatching” a pregnant woman’s hair. That’s when things really got out of control and a flight attendant made an announcement threatening to divert the aircraft.
This is truly frightening and dystopian. Belarus used a fighter jet to force down a Ryanair flight so that they could arrest a journalist on board who has opposed its President Aleksandr Lukashenko.
As pretext Belarus claims it responded to a concocted bomb threat on board the flight. However the plane was closer to its destination of Vilnius, Lithuania than Minsk, the capital of Belarus where it was forced to land.
American Airlines flight AA60 from Tokyo Narita to Dallas-Fort Worth diverted to Seattle on Wednesday after declaring a ‘level 3 security alert’ which the FAA defines as “life-threatening behavior.”
There was loud screaming in the cabin as well as “approximately 10 loud bangs” and three flight attendants were punched and kicked.
In the midst of the worst storm Texas has seen in many decades in Februry, the state’s junior Senator Ted Cruz took his family out of the country. Amidst a backlash he changed his plans and returned home. He blamed his family for the mishap, saying he was just escorting the kids and always planned to return but that story turned out to be… less than accurate.
Now Cruz is poking fun at himself, with Houston media touting low fares to Cancun on Sun Country Airlines. Naturally he’s getting roasted on social media for it.
JetBlue flight 915 from New York JFK to San Francisco diverted to Minneapolis on Sunday after a passenger, who reportedly did lines of cocaine in the aircraft lavatory and made unwanted touching advances towards a woman on board, and made knifing gestures with his hands towards her.
Most airline conflicts in the Before Times though involved one passenger or one party traveling together and crew. They’d usually be removed from the aircraft, sometimes by law enforcement. You wouldn’t have very many situations devolve to where multiple groups of passengers are fighting with each other – as we’ve seen happen over the past year. The return of business travel is going to reverse that change.
On Wednesday’s United Airlines Houston – Mexico City flight UA1060, a passenger reported that the man she was sitting next to was adjusting himself. Actress Shalita Grant, known for appearing as Special Agent Sonja Percy in NCIS: New Orleans tweeted her encounter on the flight. And she took video of the alleged deed.
A face mask brawl broke out at the Miami airport just a week after a fight broke out at Miami’s gate D14 over the last seats available to standby passengers on an American Airlines flight to Chicago. In other words, just another day at the Miami airport.
Florida. Masks. Trapped inside a metal tube. And a disproportionate number of first time leisure travelers. All passengers are Spirit Airlines passengers now.
Passengers refused to wear a mask on an Alaska Airlines flight. That got them banned from the airline. But it also burned their names and faces into the memory of a flight attendant who had to deal with them in the air.
The cabin crew member stalked their social media, and discovered that the people who wouldn’t wear a mask on their flight were willing to wear one for selfies at the January 6th Capitol Hill insurrection. Digging further it appeared from photos on Instagram that one of them was involved in taking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop. The Alaska Airlines employee tipped off the FBI.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
