There are many incidents that do not end in penalties.
Incidents involving passengers on airplanes have increased exponentially in the United States in the year that is ending, mainly due to the refusal of many of them to use the mask, mandatory on all flights to avoid the spread of covid-19.
The New York newspaper Wall Street Journal collects a study by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA, acronym in English) that shows a 463% increase in incidents on board aircraft in 2021 compared to the previous year, and they translate into a total amount of $ 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 sanctionsAnd 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 to use it once on the plane.
The FAA has warned this week that it will put the problem passengers in a kind of “black list” that will prevent them from skipping the most cumbersome controls at airports, controls from which the most rule-abiding passengers will be exempted.
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Despite of increase in coronavirus cases, 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 its routes from January 17 to 3, according to the newspaper. (I)
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