The number of disorderly passengers on commercial airplanes has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Now, one airline executive is renewing his call for a national unruly passenger no-fly list.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland in which he called on the Justice Department to set up a national “no-fly list” for unruly passengers, noting that close to 2,000 of their previous passengers had already been placed on the airline’s own list, according to a letter obtained by The Hill and first reported by Reuters.
In the letter, Bastion said the action “will help prevent future incidents and serve as a strong symbol of the consequences of not complying with crew member instructions on commercial aircraft.”
“In addition to the welcome increase in enforcement and prosecutions, we are requesting you support our efforts with respect to the much-needed step of putting any person convicted of an on-board disruption on a national, comprehensive, unruly passenger “no-fly” list that would bar that person from traveling on any commercial air carrier,” Bastian said in the letter shared with NPR.
Delta has already placed nearly 1,900 people on the company’s “no-fly” list for refusing to comply with masking requirements and submitted more than 900 banned names to the Transportation Security Administration to pursue civil penalties.
Another no-fly list raises civil liberties concerns
Delta’s request has rekindled the debate over national “no-fly lists.” Critics warn that it could face some of the same pitfalls of previously established government no-fly lists, such as the one the Transportation Safety Administration maintains for suspected terrorists.
“Generally, we think it’s a bad idea,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union, told NPR. “Our experience with government watch lists and ban lists has not been a good one.”
The ACLU has previously sued the federal government over putting people on no-fly lists without them being told why they were included.
Stanley said the government has “fought tooth and nail against basic fairness and due process protections” in such litigation, which makes him skeptical of another proposed no-fly list.
However, airlines do have some legal authority to create their own no-fly lists that are separate from the databases the federal government maintains for suspected terrorists and others, according to Charles Stotler, co-director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law.
“As long as the airline’s not acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and they’re taking actions in order to curb activities that might be inimical to safety, then the airline no-fly list is legitimate,” he added. “There has to be some link with safety. Obviously, unruly passengers fall into that.”
