Throwing Punches and Opening Emergency Doors: Airline Passengers Are Still Losing It
livemint.comMany airline passengers still don’t know how to behave. A passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight waiting at the gate in New Orleans last month opened an emergency exit, climbed onto the plane’s wing and jumped to the ground, police said. An American Airlines customer service manager was hospitalized late last month after a passenger being removed from a flight in Miami punched her in the face and pushed her down, her head striking the jet bridge.
In July, a United Airlines flight to Amsterdam was diverted when a business class flier launched into a tirade after discovering his preferred meal wasn’t available. In South Korea in May, a passenger opened his aircraft’s emergency exit midflight, forcing the jet to land. In-flight disruptions that range from annoying to dangerous are still happening at worrisome levels, regulators and airlines say, over a year after airlines dropped a contentious mask requirement—a major reason behind a surge in onboard conflict in 2021.
The Federal Aviation Administration has recorded nearly 2,000 reports of such incidents so far this year, up 71% from 2019’s full-year tally, though lower than 2021’s unprecedented peak of 5,973 incidents. The Transportation Security Administration said it had opened 374 investigations into passengers interfering with checkpoint screening in the 2023 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, up from 287 the previous 12 months.
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