Misbehaving airline passengers are paying a steep price.
Data shared by the Federal Aviation Administration showed that it has fined “unruly passengers” over $20.9 million since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.
Air travel in the United States came to a near-total halt in 2020 after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first COVID-19 case that January. That year, the FAA levied $0.6 million in fines against “unruly passengers.”
That number skyrocketed in 2021 to $5 million. At that time, COVID-19 vaccines had become more accessible, and border restrictions began to ease, meaning more people were returning to air travel.
The FAA’s fines peaked in 2022 at $8.4 million. That year, the agency said it levied its largest fines against two passengers for separate incidents in 2021. The proposed fines were $81,950 and $77,272, respectively.
The FAA fined passengers $7.5 million in 2023, a slight dip but still significantly higher than pre-pandemic.
The FAA told Business Insider it has a “zero-tolerance policy toward unruly passengers.”
“Unruly behavior is dangerous to everyone on board and in the skies because of the inconvenience, the threat of health, safety and security, and possible operational disruption of an aircraft in flight,” the FAA said in a statement.
The agency said the unruly passenger rate declined by over 65% between 2021 — when the FAA recorded almost 6,000 cases — and 2023, when it recorded about 2,000. That’s still higher than pre-pandemic numbers in 2017, 2018, and 2019.
The FAA said it had received almost 900 “unruly passenger” reports as of September 8 this year but didn’t have data on the number of fines it has issued so far.
In August, the agency said it referred over 300 of the “most serious cases” since 2021 to the FBI. Those cases involved everything from passengers attempting to breach the flight deck to physically assaulting other travelers.
“Unruly passengers are a threat to the safety of everyone on board an aircraft. The FAA’s zero-tolerance policy is working to reduce this threat and to signal that unruly behavior is not tolerated on any flight,” the statement read.
Aviation security expert Jeffrey Price told BI that travel-related stress, like delayed or canceled flights, can cause passengers to act out.
“Increased stress pretty much always results in a shorter fuse, whether that’s on a plane or on the road,” Price told BI, adding that some travelers are behaving “more entitled” post-pandemic.
