You might have missed this news from earlier in the month:

Delta Air Lines’ CEO Ed Bastian asked the U.S. Department of Justice to put convicted unruly travelers on a national “no-fly” list, the airline’s latest effort to deter aggressive behavior on flights that have surged during the pandemic.

Please note the key word “convicted” in the Delta CEO’s request. Mr. Bastion is talking about people who have enjoyed due process. Unruly airline passengers have been an increasing problem during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 72 percent of the 5,981 incidents in 2021 arising from non-mask compliance. In 350 of those cases, charges were filed. We’re still talking about a relatively limited number of people, all of them top of the class in the asshole category.

Now, the ‘no-fly’ list is not without its problems. There are real concerns about the transparency on how someone lands on the list, and further difficulties in how one can get themselves removed from it. And it’s true that the list was originally intended to stop terrorists from boarding planes. On the other hand, if you’re like me, it doesn’t take a whole lot to instill a jolt of terror on an airplane flight. Creaky landing gear or sudden turbulence will do the trick, and so will passengers who argue with the flight crew. If someone has been arrested and convicted of creating a disturbance on a flight, the airlines absolutely have the right not to take their business in the future. Maybe there should be some time limit or appeals process for the bans, but there really doesn’t need to be second chances when it comes to flight safety.

The concern here is really the request that the Department of Justice take the lead. If this were just airlines compiling the list themselves, there wouldn’t be quite so much controversy. However, mask non-compliance has become a badge of honor on the right and within the Republican Party, so now we have eight Republican senators (Cramer, Cruz, Hoeven, Lankford, Lee, Lummis, Rubio, and R. Scott)  writing a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland begging him to turn down the airline’s request.

They raise some valid concerns about the ‘no-fly’ list and I sympathize with several of their arguments. In particular, I do not want to see a slippery slope where there’s some political component to banning people from commercial air travel. The problem is that they see mask non-compliance as precisely this kind of improper political ban.

According to data from the Federal Aviation Administration2, the majority of recent infractions on airplanes has been in relation to the mask mandate from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). While we strongly condemn any violence towards airline workers, there is significant uncertainty around the efficacy of this mandate, as highlighted by the CEO of Southwest Airlines during a recent Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing. 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.

They say that they strongly condemn violence towards airline workers but then turn around immediately and suggest that it’s a valid response to a mandate that may lack efficacy. Importantly, no one said that these folks are terrorists. The issue is whether someone convicted of unruly behavior on a flight should be denied the right to fly again. More specifically, the issue is whether these small number of people can be flagged in a national database. Could be that they misbehaved because they don’t like the mask mandate, or it could be for any other reason. We’re talking about a degenerate pool of extreme losers, so they don’t need actual reasons for being impossible pricks.

Might there be a stigma attached to being publicly labeled as an unacceptable flight risk? Could some equate such a person with a terrorist?

Sure. And why not? Seems fair to me.

The creation of this list by DOJ would result in a severe restriction on the ability of citizens to fully exercise their constitutional right to engage in interstate transportation. It also raises serious concerns about future unrelated uses and potential expansions of the list based on political pressures. If the airlines seek to have such a list created, they would be best served presenting that request before Congress rather than relying on a loose interpretation of a decades-old statute originally written to combat terrorism. Absent any updated expressed directive from Congress, we strongly urge DOJ to reject this request.

I am unaware of a constitutional right to engage in interstate transportation that involves Delta having to fly you wherever you want even after you’ve been convicted of assaulting their flight attendants. What these senators are worried about is that so many of their voters are deplorable morons who scream at the people who are trying to keep them healthy and safe. If this watch list goes into effect, hundreds of Republicans will have to drive, take a train, or fly private jets. Imagine!

I’m not even arguing here that this list is necessary. It seems like something the airlines can do themselves, frankly, but I think their request should get some consideration. What bothers me is the reasoning behind the Republican senators’ objections. There simply isn’t any right fly for people who’ve been convicted of being a record-shattering asshole on a plane. Being aggressively anti-mask mandate isn’t protected political speech when it involves non-compliance with safety measure and assault.

This isn’t criminalizing political differences. I think we’d be justified in doing that is some cases where public safety is impacted, but that’s not what this list would entail. This is more like a list of people who’ve been convicted of pulling fire alarms in movie theaters. The difference is, when people watch movies on planes, they’re 35,000 feet in the air.