FAA begs airports to stop letting passengers drink alcohol on planes

The Federal Aviation Administration is practically begging airports to stop selling take-out alcohol that passengers can take on flights, ABC News reported Thursday, citing a dramatic tip unruly passengers and violence against flight crews since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

According to ABC News, the FAA has advised airport police to make more arrests of disruptive passengers and is asking bars and restaurants not to let patrons leave with alcoholic beverages, which many bring with them when traveling. boarding, despite the current rules that prohibit them from doing so.

“Although FAA regulations specifically prohibit the consumption of alcohol on board a plane that is not served by the airline, we have have received reports that some airport concessionaires have offered “take out” alcohol, ”wrote Steve Dickson, the FAA administrator, in a letter to airport managers across the country. “And the passengers think they can carry this alcohol on their flights or they get intoxicated.”

“… Airports can help raise awareness of this ban among passengers carrying open alcohol on board their flights through signage, to the public service announcements and dealer education, ”added Dickson.

FAA internal data and a recent poll conducted by the Association of Flight Attendants, the union representing cabin crew, said alcohol was one of the main causes of the surge in serious safety incidents on flights. The union investigation revealed in-flight mask warrants, which many travelers apparently still feel free to breach at their own discretion although they remain in effect until at least September, as the second largest contributing factor. Alcohol played a role in a recent incident where Frontier Airlines staff were forced to tape a passenger who would have groped two flight attendants and assaulted a colleague in his seat.

FAA figures spanning the start of the year through August 1 show that there has been 3,715 incidents reported unruly passengers, 2,729 of whom were somehow tied to mask warrants. The FAA has set up zero tolerance policies which can lead to collisions with disruptive passengers with huge fines on top of the criminal charges, but that doesn’t seem to have ended an increase in inconvenience in Heaven. the Washington post recently reported that airlines often don’t share information about unruly travelers, meaning they can just book tickets with another carrier following a ban. Prosecutors tend to prosecute only the most serious incidents, as seeing the charges against a passenger until a verdict can be a long and complicated case involving officials from multiple levels of government.

According to ABC, in the letter to airport officials, Dickson wrote: “Although the FAA has imposed civil fines on unruly passengers, it does not have the power to prosecute criminal cases. As many are released “without criminal charge of any kind,” he added, “we are missing a key opportunity to hold unruly passengers accountable for their unacceptable and dangerous behavior.”

The Justice Department told ABC that “interference with flight crew members is a serious crime that deserves the attention of federal law enforcement” and factors considered before prosecution “include the seriousness of the offense, the lives in danger, the impact on the victim, mental health, the plane must make an unscheduled landing, is it a recurrence, are there any mitigating factors, etc. The DOJ added that interference with a flight crew carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

“What we saw in our planes were flight attendants physically assaulted, pushed, suffocated ”, Sara Nelson, president of the flight attendants union, told NBC News. “We have a passenger urinating. A passenger spat into the mouth of a child on board … These were some of the things we encountered.

Nelson added that the rates of such behavior were “out of the ordinary” compared to the past 20 years.