The No-Fly list does not yet include people in viral videos being removed from planes, says TSA

While at least one member of Congress and airline workers’ unions have asked that known mutiny participants be placed on the FBI-managed air exclusion list, which is designed to prevent known and suspected terrorists from obtaining airline tickets, it is unclear whether that measure was caught.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Federal authorities and DC police are still working to identify and track many of the protesters, although at least 20 federal criminal defendants have been arrested across the country.
When a person is placed on the federal air exclusion list, they are stopped or subjected to additional screening before going through a TSA checkpoint, according to the TSA.
This means that widely publicized images of angry travelers being forced out of planes or shouting at a terminal are probably not responding to news that they were suddenly placed on the federal government’s no-fly list, according to the TSA. Instead, they are more likely to be representations of a well-known problem that has plagued airlines for months: flight attendants and airline employees being forced to deal with situations in which angry passengers refuse to comply with related security policies to Covid-19.
Although airline CEOs have claimed that the vast majority of passengers comply with the rules, mask users who refuse to wear protective gear have stopped flights in several important cases.
(Conspiracy theories that the president did not reject – and which he occasionally instigated – tried to paint Covid-19 as a “scam”.)
Last year, airlines warned passengers that they can apply their own no-fly lists, designed to prohibit disorderly passengers from flying in the future. Hundreds of passengers are currently on those lists.
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The airlines and two unions that represent flight attendants, however, said they were concerned about flight safety, as the pro-Trump protesters who invaded the United States Capitol last week left the Washington, DC area – especially after several altercations on flights to DC ahead of the insurrection.

“We are extremely concerned about the recent politically motivated incidents on board passenger aircraft,” says a statement by APFA President Julie Hedrick. “Regardless of one’s political beliefs, the cabin of a commercial aircraft must, by necessity, be a calm environment for the safety of everyone on board.”

Alaska Airlines said in a statement that it banned 14 passengers on board a flight from Washington to Seattle the day after the turmoil because they refused to wear masks and were “turbulent, argumentative and harassed our crew members”.

Alaska said it has so far banned a total of 302 passengers for violating its mask policy since it took effect on Aug. 7.

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Airlines do not necessarily share their no-fly lists with each other. Delta’s CEO, for example, said last month that about 700 people are on the company’s no-fly list. The discrepancy means that undisciplined passengers can simply book flights on different aircraft.

Meanwhile, union representatives are asking the FBI to add as many troublemakers as possible to the federal no-fly list and encouraging federal regulators to do more to discourage dangerous or disruptive flight behavior.

“Airlines and law enforcement agencies stepped up security at Washington area airports this week after reports of ‘mafia behavior’ on inbound and outbound flights from the region around Wednesday’s siege of the State Capitol. States, “according to a January 9 statement by the Association of Flight Attendants. “Every airline that has left the region in the past few days has suffered incidents on board. The House of Homeland Security flight attendants, Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), On Thursday urged TSA and the FBI to add ‘perpetrators. riots’ who participated in the Capitol riots for the federal air exclusion list. “

Democratic Congressman Peter DeFazio, chairman of the House Transport Committee, said in a statement on Monday that he is urging the FAA and its administrator, Stephen Dickson, “to limit the chance that the nation’s commercial aviation system could be used as a means of transportation to Washington, DC, for more violence in connection with the inauguration. “

The FAA issued a separate statement, announcing that “undisciplined behavior on an airplane can violate federal law” and could result in imprisonment and fines of up to $ 35,000.

Additional reporting by Gregory Wallace and Pete Muntean.

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