Crackdown on unruly or unmasked passengers

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I wonder how many of these incidents are purely mask related?

Seems like cracking down on a policy based on mixed evidence of the efficacy of cloth masks (which most people are wearing) in an environment where the air is generally very clean and with the pandemic dying off will be unsuccessful.

Though I guess it does depend on how you measure success. If one means avoiding cases of Covid-19, probably simply no measureable effect. OTOH, if one means producing a lot of enforcement cases for the FAA, it could be quite successful by that measure.

Of course the airlines have a right to do what they want on their planes, but I believe we now have a coercive Federal mandate about it as well, right? The airlines of course will welcome that since it gives them a bigger stick and deflects the onus for a policy off them and ensured no company can compete by having a more reasonable policy.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/faa-unruly-passengers-enforcement/index.html

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I can see how people get a bit confused on this because commercial flying is so heavily regulated. The boundaries between the government rules and the company rules are likely often unclear to passengers.

And frankly the airlines like being able to point at the rules as being required by the government as it reduces the onus on them. And they get released from liability, for example in the case of attacks using their planes, by letting the government take over security.

So a lot reasons passengers may not understand what is private and what is public and think they have some “rights”.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

These passengers simply think the mask rule, complying with crew directions, not getting drunk and becoming loud, obnoxious and aggressive with crew and passengers, and a heck of a lot of other rules, just don’t apply to them. ... These people are simply anti-authority which might be ok in some places but not in a shiny silver tube at FL350.

It's funny. I think if you are going to be against government coercions, and in that sense anti-authority, that it is even more important to respect private property and the rules of the owners.

The running together of government and private property with regulations, as in this case, may encourage this failure to respect any authority at all. Though I suppose as suggested some people may just not have respect for others at all and are more likely to manifest that behavior when intoxicated.