Incidents involving passengers on airplanes have increased exponentially in U.S in the year that ends, mainly due to the refusal of many of them to use the face mask, mandatory on all flights to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The New York-based Wall Street Journal published a study by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that shows an increase of 463% in incidents on board aircraft in 2021 compared to the previous year, and translates into a total amount of US $ 1 million in penalties, although they are almost never collected.
Of the total sanctions filed by FAA agents, more than half were for refusal to wear a mask, but in addition, many of the other sanctions were for irregularities by those same people who rejected the mask.
But there are many incidents that do not end in sanctions, and this is where the importance of the mask appears most clearly: of the 5,000 reports of violations by passengers, 4,000 were for refusing its use once on the plane.
The FAA has warned this week that it will put problem passengers on a kind of “black list” that will prevent them from skipping the most cumbersome controls at airports, controls from which the most respectful passengers will be exempted.
Despite the increase in cases of coronavirus, especially of its omicron variant, a record influx of aircraft is expected, and thus, United Airlines foresees 420,000 daily trips from December 16 to January 3, and Delta estimates that there will be 7.8 million travelers on their journeys from January 17 to 3, according to the newspaper.
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