US authorities warn its zero tolerance policy to air rage is permanent

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April 21, 2022
air rage
Credit: CNN.com

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will make its Zero Tolerance policy against air rage permanent.

“Behaving dangerously on a plane will cost you; that’s a promise,” Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen said.

“Unsafe behaviour simply does not fly and keeping our Zero Tolerance policy will help us continue making progress to prevent and punish this behaviour.”

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The FAA implemented the policy on Jan 13, 2021, after seeing a disturbing increase in air rage incidents. Under the policy, the FAA issues fines to passengers for unruly behaviour instead of warning letters or counselling.

The Zero Tolerance policy to air rage, combined with the agency’s public awareness campaign, has helped reduce the incident rate by more than 60 per cent.

The FAA said it will continue to work with its airline, labour, airport and security and law enforcement partners to continue driving down the number of incidents.

As of Feb 16 2022, the FAA referred 80 unruly passenger cases to the FBI for criminal review.

The agency is also working with the TSA to revoke TSA PreCheck from unruly passengers that are fined by the FAA.

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