Airlines Ask Government to Create ‘No-Fly’ List

A group of Republican Senators is pushing back against an effort supported by some of the airline industries biggest carriers to create a government blacklist of ‘violent and disruptive’ passengers. The Senators wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland saying “Creating a federal ‘no-fly’ list for unruly passengers who are skeptical of this mandate would seemingly equate them to terrorists who seek to actively take the lives of Americans and perpetrate attacks on the homeland.’ Nearly 500 unruly passenger incidents have been reported in the first six weeks of the year according to Federal Aviation Administration data for a total of more than 6,400 since the start of 2021. About two thirds of the reports this year allege violations of the federal mask mandate. Yesterday, the FAA said it had referred a total of 80 incidents to the Justice Department to consider criminal prosecution. The incidents have airlines calling for the government to create a ‘no-fly’ list for passengers who create in-flight disturbances which would be separate from the existing government run list that is part of the FBI’s terrorist screening database.