Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian wrote a letter to the Department of Justice two weeks ago, asking for help in creating a national no-fly list for the most egregious of unruly passengers.
But apparently, it wasn't the first time the industry and the administration have discussed the creation of such a ban.
In fact, according to a report from Bloomberg News, Delta and the largest U.S. carriers have already been working with The White House "for months" to create a national no-fly list that would ban the worst of disruptive fliers from using any domestic commercial airline.
Bastian and his most of his peers have been pushing for such a list for more than a year. In the wake of the pandemic, unruly incidents on planes and at airports have intensified both in number and in violence.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it received 5,891 reports of unruly fliers last year, nearly three-quarters of them related to the federal mask mandate. And despite threats of fines from the FAA and prosecution by the DOJ, the majority of disruptive passengers face little to no punishment.
As much as it sounds like punishing a child, the airlines believe that taking away the ability to fly would be more punitive than any fine.
"It's one thing to say you can't fly on one airline," Jeffrey Price, an aviation security consultant and professor of aviation management at Metropolitan State University of Denver, told Bloomberg. "It's another thing to say you can't fly on any airline."
DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg said his office will consider the creation of a no-fly list, but it appears discussions have already taken place.
Citing two sources familiar with the situation, Bloomberg said talks between the airlines, the Airlines for America lobby group and federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration "have intensified" in recent months.
"Obviously, there are enormous implications in terms of civil liberties, in terms of how you administer something like that," Buttigieg said in an interview on CNN. "Even when it was over terrorism, it was not a simple thing to set up. So none of these things can be done lightly. But I think all of these things need to be looked at, at a moment like this."
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