Airline Experts: A National ‘No-Fly’ List Difficult to Implement

Delta Air Line proposed having a national ‘no-fly’ list to prevent unruly behavior onboard. Delta Senior Vice President Kristin Manion in a memo said that a list could “further protect airline employees across the country”. Taylor added that “A list of banned customers doesn’t work as well if that customer can fly with another airline”

Delta has 1600 names in its ‘no-fly’ list. 600 of those were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration.

United and American Airlines haven’t commented on Delta’s proposal to have a national ‘no-fly’ list. Instead, both airlines referred questions to Airlines for America, which is a trade group that represents US airlines. The trade group said that it has encouraged federal authorities to prosecute unruly passengers. However, the group didn’t address the idea of having a shared list of banned passengers.

Complications of Having a National ‘No-Fly’ List

Unfortunately, the idea is not exactly simple. For Henry Harteveldt, an airline expert and president of Atmosphere Research Group, “This is the kind of thing that is easy to talk about but difficult to implement”.

For starters, different airlines have different definitions and thresholds of what they consider unruly behavior. Also, this could potentially go against anti-trust laws that prohibit airlines from collaborating with competitors. This includes sharing information on routes, prices, and other business strategies. Experts are not exactly sure whether sharing passenger names would violate this law.

Also, there’s the administrative question. Hartveldt said that airlines will have to decide who will collect and manage the list. Plus, a national ‘no-fly’ list would force airlines to have an appeals process.

For Robert Ditchey, an aviation consultant and co-founder of America West Airlines, this type of list could lead to confusion. Additional information will be needed to distinguish passengers from someone who has the same or similar name. Ditchey then asked what are the other things that passengers need to share to verify his or her identity?

Since January, airlines already reported more than 4,000 cases of unruly passengers to the FAA. More than 3,000 cases are related to passengers who are not willing to wear masks onboard. This prompted the FAA to implement a zero-tolerance policy for misbehaving passengers.