I have been on a lot of miserable flights in my lifetime but one of my worst plane experiences is the Screechy Recorder Incident of 2012. It was exactly what it sounds like: a small child seated in my general vicinity played the recorder very loudly for what felt like several hours. Even with headphones on I could feel the screech-screech-SCREEEECH penetrate my skull. The recorder is an instrument of torture, simple as that. Even the most talented musician cannot make it sound pleasant. And, reader, this child was not a talented musician.
Looking back at that flight I am amazed the kid stepped off that plane unscathed. Nobody got up and ripped the recorder from her hands (although, I’m not going to lie, I certainly thought about it). Nobody got into a violent altercation with her parents. Nobody had a meltdown. Everyone just gritted their teeth and ignored what was happening.
I have a feeling that things might have unfolded rather differently if the recorder incident had taken place more recently: thanks to the pandemic, a lot of people seem to have forgotten how to control themselves when stuck in a small space with strangers. Last year was a record year for air rage: there are normally around 100-150 reports of air rage on US airlines each year but in 2021 there were more than 5,700. And 2022 is off to a pretty belligerent start: at least two flights in January had to turn around because of unruly passenger behaviour.
What do we do about all these angry passengers? Well, Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Air Lines, wants to put them on a nationwide no-fly list. While airlines already have lists of passengers who are banned from flying with them, Bastian wants to go further and merge these lists so that passengers banned from one carrier will not be allowed on board any US commercial air carrier. On Monday, the US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg expressed support for this proposal: “I think we need to take a look at it,” Buttigieg told CNN.
I have a lot of sympathy for beleaguered plane crew. But a federal no-fly list for unruly passengers is a civil liberties nightmare. The fact that Buttigieg is even vaguely entertaining such a terrible idea is alarming. Just look what has happened with the US’s no-fly list for suspected terrorists: the American Civil Liberties Union has gone to court against the government several times because innocent people have been placed on that list with zero information as to what got them on it, or how to get off it.
Call me a bleeding heart liberal but I tend to think that putting people on opaque lists that curtail their freedom with no due process is generally a bad thing. If you want to punish unruly flyers, just stick them in cattle class on an overnight flight with a kid playing the recorder. Believe me, that is punishment enough.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
