Seems pretty awful to suggest that the government-managed 'no-fly' list should be used for anything after watching how poorly it was used and abused as a security measure. But considering the airlines look to the government to solve their financial problems, it's no surprise they would look to the government to solve their passenger problems as well. I assume begging for government intervention has become an airline CEO reflex, at this point.
Bureaucracy, security theater, and airline/airport ineptitude has turned flying into a painful, regrettable process. Add shrinking seat space and airport and airplane booze to the mix and you've got a recipe for stress, discomfort, and short tempers.
I suspect booze is actually the primary culprit. I've flown a few hundred flights in my time and only witnessed two, rather tame, incidents that caused people to be kicked off flights or caused in-air arguments. In one case the culprit was very drunk. The other case the culprit was very hung over.
Instead of asking government to have no-fly list, what doesn't each airline have its own list? They are private businesses and should be able to decide their customers, just like customers can refuse to do business with certain companies.
Just what I thought! When someone's a sufficiently bloody nuisance, ban them from the airline for some time. What is it with people who think everything must be done by gov't?
Are you arguing with me? You must be argumentative. I'll bet you go to school board meetings. That makes you more likely to cause an incident on the plane. You must go on the list. Expect a visit from CPS to check on the welfare of your children. They may be in danger. /s
Agreed, I have a pretty horrible panic attack that starts with the takeoff roll, eases a bit when we're in the air and will return with any turbulence. Alcohol helps this significantly.
Going to be pretty hard to stop people bringing their own flasks of vodka or whiskey.
I enjoy drinks too much on flights, would be better off without them.
Also it's kinda public space, occasionally with little kids - I'd prefer them not to be around alcohol.
Finally, having different areas of economy kinda solves this - half plane for young and ready to party, other half - for quiet and chill. Separate area for kids too. All of this is trivial to solve in booking software.
Drinking on a plane always seems like a great idea, but despite only having one or two I invariably feel worse after flights where I’ve drank than ones where I haven’t. Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be one of those veteran, pickled business travelers that can pound the drinks.
It is the DRINKS BEFORE boarding that is the issue. The tacky bars slinging full bars and specials pushing you to load up before the flight - 10ft from the boarding gate. Having a cocktail ON the flight IMHO is "ok" - stewardesses will monitor and cut off. However, those tacky bars will let you have 6 hard drinks before board. You mix people with high flight anxiety, preboard boredom and pushy bars: a flight mess.
And various prescription drugs. Between the stress of flying, especially the lack of sleep, the plentiful alcohol, the various drugs people take (ambien), and the entire security theater thing, I am suprised there isnt an arrest on every flight.
High flight anxiety or drinking too much are not excuses for being disruptive on a flight. I’d bet there is some underlying personality disorder. Ban the people and let the 99% who can consume without bothering anyone do so.
I think this is probably a good idea, but not as an extension of the current no-fly list, which is opaque and lacking accountability.
The "disruptive passenger" no-fly list should have clear criteria for why people are put on it and for how long, and a clear process for challenging being incorrectly placed on the list. Ideally this would be a bit better than having airlines collaborate amongst themselves to create their own no-fly list which can't be legally challenged because they're private organizations that can mostly do what they want. On the other hand, being blacklisted by private companies would in some ways be less creepy/authoritarian than the no-fly lists as they exist now.
I'd much prefer these passengers be put on the official no fly list, if only to force the law suit that will eventually give EVERYONE on the list information on why they are on it, for how long, and a clear process for challenging being incorrectly placed on the list.
Right now if the government thinks you might have maybe been associated with any definition of terrorism you're banned from flying with basically no recourse. The assholes punching people and grabbing butts atleast have clearly committed crimes and shown themselves to be a danger to others in the sky.
>information on why they are on it, for how long, and a clear process for challenging being incorrectly placed on the list.
If the answers are anything other than "they were convicted in a court of law by a jury of their peers," "for as long as the judge sentenced them to," and "by appealing to a higher court," then the only thing transparent about the list would be its transparent illegitimacy.
In fact, if people could see the reason they were on it, it would seem less legitimate, because "agent #78 thought you belonged on it and his boss signed off," would serve only to highlight what the justice system abdicated when it allowed it to be set up.
>I'd much prefer these passengers be put on the official no fly list, if only to force the law suit that will eventually give EVERYONE on the list information...
While I appreciate the thinking (sometimes falsely attributed to Lincoln: "The best way to fix a bad law is to enforce it perfectly"), it's a bad idea to make it easier to add people to the current no-fly list in the hopes that this will "poison the well" so-to-speak. If your idea were tried, it would result in a measurably worse world for a generation, perhaps indefinitely. The no-fly list is a great example of a "boring tyranny", a type of tyranny that politicians don't credit for confronting, and so don't even get talked about. So you'll make this change, and then for 20 or 30 years you'll hear the same exact debates about abortion and gun rights, and the worse world you made will continue in the shadows.
Why do you think this would force that lawsuit that would make things more transparent? There are already thousands of people on the no-fly list. I don't think the unruly passengers are in any way special such that they'd have more success challenging this sort of thing.
Well, the article specifically says people convicted of assaulting or other disruption should be placed on the no-fly list. Which is a fairly high bar, we don't really hand out unfounded criminal convictions for assault.
While I agree that a conviction is much better than nothing, I don't share your faith in the accuracy of our criminal justice system, especially if a plea bargain (aka blackmail) was involved at any stage of the process, whether for the convicted, or for any of the witnesses. Additionally, prosecutorial discretion is a pox on the fairness of justice - but we have so many laws on the books that removing prosecutorial discretion is entirely unreasonable. And then there's the questionable quality of judges exacerbated by the fact that many are explicitly elected (i.e. picked for politics not competence), or political appointees without an appointment process that itself has any reasonable checks, and finally that they are large unaccountable; judicial misconduct appears to be worryingly common, whistleblowers are often at the mercy of judges or their pals, and the process to evaluate claims of misconduct is much too cosy and insufficiently guards against influence by the perpetrator and their friends, and punishments are laughable lax compared to the consequences such misconduct might have for victims thereof.
Of course, at least judges are human and many will therefore be honest and try to do their best despite the system they work in, but it's still a pretty flimsy basis for trust.
> The "disruptive passenger" no-fly list should have clear criteria for why people are put on it and for how long, and a clear process for challenging being incorrectly placed on the list.
Complaining about terrible service is certainly not a good reason to be put on the list.
I disagree. No matter the circumstances, the government should not be levelling penalties against a person unless that person has 1) committed a crime and 2) the no-fly penalty is defined by legal statute and sentenced by a judge with all the constitutional protections that entails. Not by a private corporation and its employees.
In this case, it seems like only #1 is fulfilled, or at least I'm not aware of any law that has no-fly as a penalty. I know, there's the normal no-fly list but I already don't understand how that passes constitutional muster as a penalty via administrative rather than criminal/legal processes.
The vast majority of the traveling public would never even think about assaulting a flight attendant. Presumably most flight attendants would not like to fly with someone who has assaulted a flight attendant.
Most people suffering from mental illnesses pose no danger or annoyance to anyone. Lumping them in with violent / abusive / entitled / dangerous troublemakers is insulting and demeaning to mental illness sufferers as a whole.
The general public (including non dangerous mental patients) has a right to not be put at risk, intimidated or restricted in their travels by a tiny minority of dangerous individuals.
Finally, most antisocial types are either not really diagnosable with a mental disorder, or not diagnosed when one could be. On top of that, even when a diagnosis can and is applied, the effective treatment options are few. We just don't know how to fix narcissists. Thus labelling them as having a mental disorder is entirely pointless, even if you're so generous as to be willing to disregard the massive damages they cause.
It's not so much about punishment as it is about keeping people safe. If you can't behave in a safe manner in the air, you shouldn't be there regardless of your mental health.
What is with some of the responses in this thread! I understand some cases are not so clear, but if you do something as blatant as punch a flight attendant in the face I think that’s grounds to be put on such a list. There should be a policy so that after a period (or going through some program) you could then be removed from the list though..
It actually blew my mind when I heard that you could assault someone on a plane and not be instantly banned
What I don't get, instead, are the people who, like you, find a no fly-list acceptable.
If you punch a person on the street, you get charged. Same if you punch a flight attendant on a plane.
You might even go to jail in both cases. But what you don't get in the first case is to be put on a blacklist that prevents you from using some services. If you punch a person in a supermarket, you are not banned from supermarkets.
What you advocate for reminds of proscription lists in ancient Rome or the social credit system of the CCP.
> If you punch a person in a supermarket, you are not banned from supermarkets.
Uh, I dunno. We definitely banned disruptive people from our supermarket. And we’d happily let other supermarkets nearby know that Mr. X was an asshole that should be treated with extreme caution (and vice versa).
I don’t see why the government needs to get involved with this though. Airlines are perfectly capable of making and sharing such a list themselves.
> If you punch a person in a supermarket, you are not banned from supermarkets.
If you punch a person in a supermarket, authorities can be summoned to take you away. If you do that on a plane, that can't be done. Planes are safe because things are heavily regulated and expected to go according to an extremely strict plan. Any aberration increases the risk of a catastrophic event.
Most professional sports teams in the US ban fans that fight in the stadiums. In regards to banning people in supermarkets - yes, the store is entirely within its right to ban the customer: https://axislc.com/public/can-a-business-ban-a-customer/
Clearly the system has not been abused too much if you are not even aware this is how it already works.
An airline is a business - why would a business want to transport a passenger who has a history of criminal misconduct onboard their aircraft? The airlines have a duty to protect their employees, and a duty of care towards other passengers. They also have a rightful interest in running their services on-time and without disruption.
In the US, airlines are common carriers - which involves certain obligations like published pricing and non-discrimination - but that still allows them the right to refuse carriage on reasonable grounds. You can argue what "reasonable grounds" means, but "criminal history of violent or disruptive behavior onboard an aircraft" seems like it's probably going to suffice.
I'm not sure I am in favour of a no-fly list, however, flying (unlike other examples in this thread; walking across the street, going to a supermarket etc) is not a basic human need. You (and many others do) do not need to ever fly in your life to live a happy and fulfilled life, without any pressure (you could never visit a supermarket but that's actually much harder; most people will never fly in their lives automatically anyway). For most people it is a minor inconvenience if they could never fly again and a minority will have to find another job. A list like it would have little or no impact on anything basically for by far most people on earth. So the question is, is having the list so beneficial for enough people (who are in these planes where repeat offenders kick up a stink) to go through the trouble of creating one?
For each person who punched a flight attendant I bet there are 5 on the list who didn’t come even close to that. The list itself can be used as a threat.
Around here (NL), notorious shoplifters are banned from certain shopping centres. The shopkeepers keep a list with photo's and share it among them. This is established practice (though I'm not sure how widespread) and isn't even considered a GDPR violation as long as the list isn't made public, since protecting yourself from fraud is a legitimate business interest.
Yes, in an ideal world this wouldn't be needed because you could trust the police to handle such cases adequately, but they don't. Hence, where justice fails, you see alternative systems prop up (also see #metoo, cancel culture).
So you punch someone in the street, should you be banned from walking on any street anywhere in the country?
Why are aircrafts so special that they need such special rules about banning people who commit a minor crime one time? Remember these crimes are minor crimes. Yet people are honestly thinking the correct level of response for an assualt is the inability to use an entire industry.
Of course Airlines want the power to banish people from the industry and give their hosts and hostesses power that people will be afraid of them and just comply with everything and anything. These people already have a lot of power in the fact not complying is a crime.
But to be fair, this is coming from a country where there freedoms are so limited it's a crime to cross the street in the wrong area.
Secondly, you're sealed into a tube with 100 other passengers, over the Atlantic ocean on a 14 hour flight. One passenger who cannot control themselves, decides they're going to punch a flight attendant. Now what? You can't just call the police (like you can on the street).
So now, people who are not the police, have to "detain" this individual to keep them from hurting others. The plane has to divert to land so that the person can be handled by law enforcement. The 14 hour flight is now potentially 24-48 hours total, people have missed connecting flights, holidays, work meetings, etc.
So how and why people continue to compare punching someone on the street with punching someone on an airplane, is beyond me. While they're both technically assault, that's where the comparison ends.
A private plane and a public street are indeed very different. Not that I agree with a shared no fly list between all airlines, but if a single airline wants to ban you after an incident it's not that different than Walgreens banning you because you punched an employee
It think the risk is in transparency. If I piss off an airline employee in some way and they decide to punish me in this way with no recourse it's a problem.
The whole thing exists outside the regular justice system. Even if the airline employee puts you in the list in good faith, the criteria they used to put you there would be somewhat arbitrary (define "unruly") and not weighed against any kind of precedent for similar infractions. Appeal is also difficult.
The responses in this thread were unusually crazy/crass/rude before moderation apparently stepped in. I dunno if that was a glimpse of "unmoderated HN" or if this topic in particular draws out emotions.
The no fly list was setup for a reason and using it to exclude others reduces the seriousness of the original list to the point where the public will demand it's removal.
> The no fly list was setup for a reason and using it to exclude others reduces the seriousness of the original list to the point where the public will demand it's removal.
I hope so but I wouldn't hold my breath. I remember initially the "enhanced" security pat down was "random" which meant they'd pull aside only brown people. Guess what if it is truly random then grandma on a wheel chair should also be subject to the same "enhanced" pat down. Then they did "enhanced" security pat down on grandmas on wheel chairs but I don't see the public demanding (at least not successfully) the removal.
The whole thing is an opaque mess and includes many false positives. I certainly don't feel any safer flying with the list in place than I would otherwise. To me it seems like another example of post 9/11 security theatre.
There’s a lot of gray areas too. I recall a flight where the guy across the aisle from me simply could not sit in his seat. Before we even took off they had multiple conversations with him trying to get him in his seat. In the air, he would repeatedly get up and try to lay down to sleep in the aisle. Their talks with him and me being the nearest seat, had me on edge the whole time expecting I was going to have to break up a fight or dodge a rouge fist. I firmly believe this guy needed a probationary period on air travel.
Also Let’s not forget stadiums ban people for heckling, booing, or other extreme conduct. You’ll get kicked out of a movie theater for disruptive behavior, etc. The punitive actions shouldn’t be too foreign.
You can be banned from flying. You dont have a right to fly... it's a contract between airlines and passengers. Airlines ban passengers as they see fit. They dont need the government to ban passengers. They "need" (want) the government to act in the best interests of the airlines.
Because it’s literally too good to be true. Anyone would love to believe such a list will work, but measures like these will invariably become more problem than they’re worth. I bet that guy who got dragged out of the airplane some time ago would be on that list very quick. It’s a great list until you find yourself in it because you lost your patience with an attendant for being double booked. “Please calm down sir”.
Especially considering nobody has the same first and last name as some other person and government, security and low wage slaves at airlines are never ever make mistakes.
To the glorious days of flying without disturbances!
I don't think people are saying an airline shouldn't ban but questioning whether they should be put on a federal list managed by the US government. That's a slippery slope.
If you assault someone on the street, should you be banned from being on all streets, indefinitely and on the whim of the owner of one of the streets, without any legal recourse?
Reductio ad absurdum. This analogy couldn't be worse.
People on the street have multiple ways to deal with your shitty behaviour, including distancing or removing themselves from the situation.
Not so much on the plane. Also, you do realise that streets can't crash and kill everyone who was walking on them?
It’s a slippery slope.
If you risk the life of all the passengers with your behaviour because you can’t be bothered of following the basic rules of civility you should definitely be in a no-flight list.
Following your nonsensical slippery slope, we already put behind bars people that are a danger to the fellow citizens, and in some cases, yes, you are banned indefinitely from all the streets. It’s called “death penalty” and Americans should know one or two things about it.
If you ask me, putting someone on a no-fight list makes definitely more sense than killing someone.
I'm a bit torn: I see the potential for civil liberties abuse, but, one of the things I loathe the most about American culture is how entitled 'consumers' feel towards treating workers that are serving them. I feel that the mistreatment of airport staff is that kind of behaviour taken to extremes- and it's something I'd like to see utterly crushed.
I think one of the sore points is that airport workers routinely mistreat customers. True, usually not to the point of physical violence, but plenty of mistreatment regardless. A trite example I just experienced last week: my flight was cancelled, so I stood in a line along with everyone to get rebooked. By the time I got to the counter at the gate, the agent said I had to go to the main ticketing desk in departures to rebook. I asked why the dozens of people in front of me got to rebook right here at the counter. The agent then just acted like I was not there and turned around and started casually chatting to the other staff there. That kind of rudeness happens all the time, and it is precisely what leads to escalations.
The point is that treating staff with disrespect is certainly not justified, but neither is it out of the blue, more often than not it is reciprocal behavior. Flyers are treated like rubbish by airline staff.
I think it’s true that there is some amount of dehumanization on both ends as a coping mechanism. But we cannot equivocate some casual dehumanization on the part of staff with actual physical abuse or endangering the lives of hundreds of people - those are two entirely different things and shouldn’t even be discussed in the same context as one justifying the other.
Yup, and it has gotten much worse during the pandemic. I too have dealt with crazy rude airline staff like this. Not to mention some of the airlines in general are just dropping the ball with their service.
How is it an airline maintaining their own no-fly list different from causing a ruckus in a store and being told by the owner that you weren't allowed back?
This request is different than that. Delta is requesting that airlines be allowed to refer people to a national no-fly list that would ban the individuals from all air travel on all carriers.
In your example, it would be like causing a ruckus in a store, and being banned from all stores.
That's a much more serious penalty given how our society is organized, and seems like it should have some sort of judicial constraint.
Great idea. Anyone who does anything wrong should be banned from the place where they did something wrong forever with no recourse or mechanism for lifting the ban.
Act unruly in a grocery store? You're banned from grocery stores for the rest of your life.
Act unruly at work? You're banned from having a job for the rest of your life.
Act unruly in a restaurant? No more restaurants for you, ever again.
What will happen to all these people who have been cast out of the public sphere and shunned by society? Who cares! They acted unruly once, there can be no forgiveness, no amends, no possibility for growth and change. I'm sure they'll all just quietly slump off to the shadows and die without a fuss so we won't ever have to think about them again. Meanwhile, the rest of us good, law-abiding citizens who have never done a single thing wrong or ever been rude to anyone in our entire lives can live in peace. Finally!
Yes. I have tried super sarcastic comments before - what I realized is some cultures do not have sarcasm - which makes it more funny - but they downvote super confused.
this is why you cannot expand power without giving a time limit to it - emergency powers are meant for emergencies only. An emergency must have an end, otherwise it's not an emergency!
My state (Washington) just hit its 700th day of the state of emergency as declared by the governor. This gives him the ability to do just about anything, so he's refusing to let it go.
Welcome to day 701 of 14 days to flatten the curve!
No emergency power should extend beyond the next legislative session.
Emergency powers should be a stop gap only until lawmakers can meet, at which point every emergency rule expires and cannot be reinstated without lawmaker approval.
No more of these open ended blessed dictatorships.
Bills like Patriot Act do have to be re-authorized, and it actually expired in 2020 because Trump threatened to veto. Weirdly, nobody seems to know this, and it seems to be continuing in zombie form, because banks and other institutions still have paperwork citing the Patriot Act. So it’s not enough to require time limits or re-authorization. These bills need built-in self-destruction mechanisms to be rolled back.
According to the article Delta is asking for a new list, and a list of people convicted of crimes and not merely suspected or something. It's pretty different than the terrorism no-fly list.
The article mixes three different concepts that should make all readers pause: “convicted”, “zero tolerance” and sharing lists the airlines already keep. It needs to be more clear what’s being proposed. Barring passengers previously convicted of felony assault on an airplane is very different then appearing on a list maintained by a private company about high maintenance customers…
You’d think that a demonstrated history of violence to air crew (for a sufficient definition of violence) would be a stronger reason than potential violence. But the no-fly list is sort of like the felony lifetime forfeiture of constitional rights, so it would seem that felonies as opposed to misdemeanors would be the minimum bar.
The thought process is that an unruly passenger on United, for example, should be banned from all airlines and air lines so they can’t go cause trouble elsewhere.
I think the airlines are asking the government to step in because they’re not sure they can legally work together to ban people from all air travel. I believe a government process is the correct answer here but only with due process and guard rails.
I think part of the larger challenge here is that the laws put the responsibility for enforcement on airlines. Flight attendants didn’t sign up and aren’t trained to be law enforcement officers.
More stringent, wider ranging consequences add teeth to FA authority and more importantly would prevent some people from challenging the rules in the first place.
If they use publicly owned airports, conditions under which passengers are denied boarding can be reasonably regulated to for example not be "wrote a negative Yelp review"
Readit News
Bureaucracy, security theater, and airline/airport ineptitude has turned flying into a painful, regrettable process. Add shrinking seat space and airport and airplane booze to the mix and you've got a recipe for stress, discomfort, and short tempers.
I suspect booze is actually the primary culprit. I've flown a few hundred flights in my time and only witnessed two, rather tame, incidents that caused people to be kicked off flights or caused in-air arguments. In one case the culprit was very drunk. The other case the culprit was very hung over.
They do.
It all turns into a cycle of manipulation to get ahead because that’s how our feudal trade memes work.
I don’t believe any of you are doing anything truly novel and useful; y’all are just playing the Rules of Acquisition.
I enjoy drinks too much on flights, would be better off without them.
Also it's kinda public space, occasionally with little kids - I'd prefer them not to be around alcohol.
Finally, having different areas of economy kinda solves this - half plane for young and ready to party, other half - for quiet and chill. Separate area for kids too. All of this is trivial to solve in booking software.
If each had a connection, it would only be 5 trips per year (4 flights each trip) for five years.
The "disruptive passenger" no-fly list should have clear criteria for why people are put on it and for how long, and a clear process for challenging being incorrectly placed on the list. Ideally this would be a bit better than having airlines collaborate amongst themselves to create their own no-fly list which can't be legally challenged because they're private organizations that can mostly do what they want. On the other hand, being blacklisted by private companies would in some ways be less creepy/authoritarian than the no-fly lists as they exist now.
Right now if the government thinks you might have maybe been associated with any definition of terrorism you're banned from flying with basically no recourse. The assholes punching people and grabbing butts atleast have clearly committed crimes and shown themselves to be a danger to others in the sky.
If the answers are anything other than "they were convicted in a court of law by a jury of their peers," "for as long as the judge sentenced them to," and "by appealing to a higher court," then the only thing transparent about the list would be its transparent illegitimacy.
In fact, if people could see the reason they were on it, it would seem less legitimate, because "agent #78 thought you belonged on it and his boss signed off," would serve only to highlight what the justice system abdicated when it allowed it to be set up.
While I appreciate the thinking (sometimes falsely attributed to Lincoln: "The best way to fix a bad law is to enforce it perfectly"), it's a bad idea to make it easier to add people to the current no-fly list in the hopes that this will "poison the well" so-to-speak. If your idea were tried, it would result in a measurably worse world for a generation, perhaps indefinitely. The no-fly list is a great example of a "boring tyranny", a type of tyranny that politicians don't credit for confronting, and so don't even get talked about. So you'll make this change, and then for 20 or 30 years you'll hear the same exact debates about abortion and gun rights, and the worse world you made will continue in the shadows.
So, no, please do not do this.
Of course, at least judges are human and many will therefore be honest and try to do their best despite the system they work in, but it's still a pretty flimsy basis for trust.
Complaining about terrible service is certainly not a good reason to be put on the list.
In this case, it seems like only #1 is fulfilled, or at least I'm not aware of any law that has no-fly as a penalty. I know, there's the normal no-fly list but I already don't understand how that passes constitutional muster as a penalty via administrative rather than criminal/legal processes.
That is, even without further conditions, a fairly extreme position (“public civil penalties should not exist”.)
Not the first time airlines have attacked the mentally ill, they especially like to target children. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/08/22/flight-crew...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56428231
[3] https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2021/05/04/family-barred-f...
[4] https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/air-...
[5] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10168687/Man-cerebr...
[6] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10037077/Quadripleg...
[7] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/american-airlines-responds...
The vast majority of the traveling public would never even think about assaulting a flight attendant. Presumably most flight attendants would not like to fly with someone who has assaulted a flight attendant.
The general public (including non dangerous mental patients) has a right to not be put at risk, intimidated or restricted in their travels by a tiny minority of dangerous individuals.
Finally, most antisocial types are either not really diagnosable with a mental disorder, or not diagnosed when one could be. On top of that, even when a diagnosis can and is applied, the effective treatment options are few. We just don't know how to fix narcissists. Thus labelling them as having a mental disorder is entirely pointless, even if you're so generous as to be willing to disregard the massive damages they cause.
It actually blew my mind when I heard that you could assault someone on a plane and not be instantly banned
If you punch a person on the street, you get charged. Same if you punch a flight attendant on a plane.
You might even go to jail in both cases. But what you don't get in the first case is to be put on a blacklist that prevents you from using some services. If you punch a person in a supermarket, you are not banned from supermarkets.
What you advocate for reminds of proscription lists in ancient Rome or the social credit system of the CCP.
Uh, I dunno. We definitely banned disruptive people from our supermarket. And we’d happily let other supermarkets nearby know that Mr. X was an asshole that should be treated with extreme caution (and vice versa).
I don’t see why the government needs to get involved with this though. Airlines are perfectly capable of making and sharing such a list themselves.
If you punch a person in a supermarket, authorities can be summoned to take you away. If you do that on a plane, that can't be done. Planes are safe because things are heavily regulated and expected to go according to an extremely strict plan. Any aberration increases the risk of a catastrophic event.
Clearly the system has not been abused too much if you are not even aware this is how it already works.
In the US, airlines are common carriers - which involves certain obligations like published pricing and non-discrimination - but that still allows them the right to refuse carriage on reasonable grounds. You can argue what "reasonable grounds" means, but "criminal history of violent or disruptive behavior onboard an aircraft" seems like it's probably going to suffice.
Yes, in an ideal world this wouldn't be needed because you could trust the police to handle such cases adequately, but they don't. Hence, where justice fails, you see alternative systems prop up (also see #metoo, cancel culture).
Why are aircrafts so special that they need such special rules about banning people who commit a minor crime one time? Remember these crimes are minor crimes. Yet people are honestly thinking the correct level of response for an assualt is the inability to use an entire industry.
Of course Airlines want the power to banish people from the industry and give their hosts and hostesses power that people will be afraid of them and just comply with everything and anything. These people already have a lot of power in the fact not complying is a crime.
But to be fair, this is coming from a country where there freedoms are so limited it's a crime to cross the street in the wrong area.
Secondly, you're sealed into a tube with 100 other passengers, over the Atlantic ocean on a 14 hour flight. One passenger who cannot control themselves, decides they're going to punch a flight attendant. Now what? You can't just call the police (like you can on the street).
So now, people who are not the police, have to "detain" this individual to keep them from hurting others. The plane has to divert to land so that the person can be handled by law enforcement. The 14 hour flight is now potentially 24-48 hours total, people have missed connecting flights, holidays, work meetings, etc.
So how and why people continue to compare punching someone on the street with punching someone on an airplane, is beyond me. While they're both technically assault, that's where the comparison ends.
Because unlike on the street, you can't pull out a gun and defend yourself.
Deleted Comment
Edit: Wait, the original title does have “convicted” in it. Guess it’s the submitter optimizing for outrage.
It think the risk is in transparency. If I piss off an airline employee in some way and they decide to punish me in this way with no recourse it's a problem.
I hope so but I wouldn't hold my breath. I remember initially the "enhanced" security pat down was "random" which meant they'd pull aside only brown people. Guess what if it is truly random then grandma on a wheel chair should also be subject to the same "enhanced" pat down. Then they did "enhanced" security pat down on grandmas on wheel chairs but I don't see the public demanding (at least not successfully) the removal.
The whole thing is an opaque mess and includes many false positives. I certainly don't feel any safer flying with the list in place than I would otherwise. To me it seems like another example of post 9/11 security theatre.
Also Let’s not forget stadiums ban people for heckling, booing, or other extreme conduct. You’ll get kicked out of a movie theater for disruptive behavior, etc. The punitive actions shouldn’t be too foreign.
Also, take away a person's license for life if they assault someone while driving!
If they're rude in a restaurant/grocery store/etc., just ban them from society forever!
Make one mistake, and you're fucked for life!
Especially considering nobody has the same first and last name as some other person and government, security and low wage slaves at airlines are never ever make mistakes.
To the glorious days of flying without disturbances!
How about identifying people by their citizenship ID? I’m fairly certain it was made exactly to avoid naming issues.
Dead Comment
Not so much on the plane. Also, you do realise that streets can't crash and kill everyone who was walking on them?
The point is that treating staff with disrespect is certainly not justified, but neither is it out of the blue, more often than not it is reciprocal behavior. Flyers are treated like rubbish by airline staff.
I’ve never really experienced anything like it.
The casual disregard some US visitors have for staff anywhere is appalling.
In your example, it would be like causing a ruckus in a store, and being banned from all stores.
That's a much more serious penalty given how our society is organized, and seems like it should have some sort of judicial constraint.
The point of using the government no fly list is to pass the controversy onto something else.
Act unruly in a grocery store? You're banned from grocery stores for the rest of your life.
Act unruly at work? You're banned from having a job for the rest of your life.
Act unruly in a restaurant? No more restaurants for you, ever again.
What will happen to all these people who have been cast out of the public sphere and shunned by society? Who cares! They acted unruly once, there can be no forgiveness, no amends, no possibility for growth and change. I'm sure they'll all just quietly slump off to the shadows and die without a fuss so we won't ever have to think about them again. Meanwhile, the rest of us good, law-abiding citizens who have never done a single thing wrong or ever been rude to anyone in our entire lives can live in peace. Finally!
Deleted Comment
Welcome to day 701 of 14 days to flatten the curve!
Emergency powers should be a stop gap only until lawmakers can meet, at which point every emergency rule expires and cannot be reinstated without lawmaker approval.
No more of these open ended blessed dictatorships.
People get used to it, and they become indifferent to it. They will vote to extend those limits...
Dead Comment
The thought process is that an unruly passenger on United, for example, should be banned from all airlines and air lines so they can’t go cause trouble elsewhere.
I think the airlines are asking the government to step in because they’re not sure they can legally work together to ban people from all air travel. I believe a government process is the correct answer here but only with due process and guard rails.
More stringent, wider ranging consequences add teeth to FA authority and more importantly would prevent some people from challenging the rules in the first place.
The problem, of course, is that these people are most likely to be the kind of entitled dipshits that will make negative press for you.
Oh, and don't get me started about how airline flight attendants have to pay their own legal bills in a startling number of conditions.
Dead Comment