Thousands Of Passengers Could Be Banned From Flying And Fined For Not Wearing Masks

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The Federal Aviation Administration disclosed some figures on Monday about unruly (read: shitty) passengers who made their fellow travelers’ lives a little bit harder because they just didn’t want to wear a mask aboard a plane.

So far, 1,300 passengers have been reported for their unruly behavior since February, per Reuters. Of those 1,300 people who’ve been reported, at least 260 are being looked at for potential violations which mostly involve “passengers not wearing masks as required on airplanes,” according to Reuters.

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Image for article titled Thousands Of Passengers Could Be Banned From Flying And Fined For Not Wearing Masks
Photo: Getty (Getty Images)
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The FAA has already moved onto the enforcement phase in 20 of those cases, which, frankly speaking, is not enough. With all due respect to the FAA, those are rookie numbers because, really, this is just ridiculous at this point.

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If you are gonna travel by plane, it’s probably for the best to follow precautions that have been put in place to benefit and safeguard all of those folks in that tiny, cramped metal tube hurtling through the atmosphere.

And yet, despite zero tolerance policies and federal mandates, some people still balked at the notion that they had to mask up when boarding and/or at the airport at all.

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The U.S. Transportation Security Administration also shared figures in the Reuters report about the number of passengers who have been cited as “...non mask-compliant.” In the case of the TSA, the number is slightly higher than that of the FAA, sitting at 2,000 passengers so far. The TSA will be imposing fines on these non-complies, and the FAA is following suit in a few cases so far, too.

Image for article titled Thousands Of Passengers Could Be Banned From Flying And Fined For Not Wearing Masks
Photo: Getty (Getty Images)
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The fines are not the only consequences, though. Delta Air Lines has already banned over 1,200 unruly passengers from future flights. Some of these have been reported to the FAA, but not all, so there’s a little overlap there.

That is just mind-boggling. Think about those lucky few who are within the venn diagram of having been banned by Delta while being fined by the FAA, all because they could not be bothered to wear their mask on a plane. I would call them unlucky, but the truth is much harsher.