In the air and on the ground, the country may be more polarized today than at any other time since the 1960s.
Delta Airlines CEO Edward Bastian said an unidentified man who was “loud, rude, and disrespectful to his fellow passengers” on a flight from Atlanta to Allentown “will never again be allowed on a Delta plane.” Fellow passenger Emma Baum first noticed the outspoken Donald Trump supporter in the terminal. As passengers boarded the plane, Ms. Baum asked the man about his election thoughts. She videoed the man standing, shouting at passengers, using profanity, and clapping his hands. The flight crew initially removed the man and subsequently allowed him back on the plane.
An Allentown Police Department spokesperson said there was no record of an offense report, and the APD would have referred the matter to airport police.
Private No-Fly Lists
Rather surprisingly, the laws regarding disruptive passengers have not changed much since 9/11, but the authority that airline crews have in enforcing and interpreting these laws has increased significantly. No one knows how many passengers are on private no-fly lists or why they are on the lists to begin with; reportedly, there are about 150 people on American Airline’s blacklist.
A common carrier’s legal authority to bar disruptive passengers goes all the way back to Reasor v. Paducah & Illinois Ferry Co (1915). After Mr. Reasor bought a ticket and boarded a ferry, the crew kicked him off the boat. On a previous trip, Mr. Reasor had “cursed and sworn in the presence and hearing of lady passengers” while in a “drunk and disorderly condition,” and had otherwise “rendered himself obnoxious.”
He sued the ferry company for $5,000, a rather large sum of money at the time. Initially, a jury sided with Mr. Reasor. But an appeals court ruled that the company had the “right to make reasonable and proper rules for the conduct of its business,” and that includes the right to “exclude” a passenger who is “in such an intoxicated condition as to be unable to care for himself” or if he is “habitually guilty of misconduct.”
So, according to Reasor, the no-fly penalty assessed in the above story may be excessive because one incident does not constitute a pattern of misconduct. In fact, the Reasor court expressly held that if previously “drunk, boisterous, [or] unruly” passengers return to the common carrier and behave themselves, they can use the conveyance.
Passengers who threaten safety are in a different category. 49 U.S.C. 44902 gives airlines the authority to “refuse to transport a passenger or property the carrier decides is, or might be, inimical to safety.” This rule is subjective, as there are almost no standards as to who is or is not a threat to safety. However, there is a 1982 Court of Appeals case that says that such rules cannot be “unreasonably or irrationally formed.” Muslim and other Middle Eastern airline passengers have complained for years that flight crews unfairly single them out, and such discrimination is illegal under federal law, but there are no reported cases.
Count on Experienced Attorneys
Airlines must follow certain rules before they blacklist passengers, but these rules are sometimes rather subjective. For a free consultation with an experienced criminal defense lawyer in Schaumburg,
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