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Disputes over masks are 75% of FAA’s unruly-passenger complaints on planes

Disputes over masks are 75% of FAA's unruly-passenger complaints on planes

A traveler wearing a face mask is seen at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia on February 2, 2021.

Ting Shen | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

Much of the Federal Aviation Administration’s recalcitrant passenger reports on aircraft come from passengers who refuse to comply with mask requirements to protect against the spread of Covid-19.

About 75% of reports of recalcitrant passengers since Jan. 1 began with people refusing to wear their masks and escalated from there into profanity, screaming matches and even physical violence, the agency said on Tuesday.

The FAA introduced a “zero tolerance” policy with heavy fines earlier this year aimed at curbing unruly passengers after an increase in incidents, but that hasn’t stopped travelers from berating airlines, disrupting flights, and even two to knock teeth out of the mouth of a flight attendant.

“It’s gotten out of hand,” said Paul Hartshorn, spokesman for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents American Airlines’ more than 20,000 flight attendants. “It really gets to the point where we have to defend ourselves.”

The current federal mask requirements require travelers on trains, buses, commercial flights and at airports to wear face masks. The mandate, which was extended in the spring, currently expires on September 13th.

So far this year, the FAA has fined untrue travelers $ 682,000, identifying potential violations in 540 cases and taking enforcement actions in 83 cases.

The agency on Tuesday released the details of eight cases of recalcitrant travelers fined between $ 7,500 and $ 21,500 for disputes stemming from their refusal to wear masks, including two cases where passengers were other passengers hit.

Flights have been delayed and even diverted due to unruly passengers, many of whom refuse to wear face masks properly or at all. The agency does not disclose the identity of the fined passengers, but does say that passengers have 30 days to appeal the fines.

Health officials generally consider airplane travel safe with regards to Covid, but they have said it depends on passengers’ compliance with mask requirements and other guidelines.

“Although we have seen overall cases of transmissions on airplanes, this is a safe form of travel even from a Covid perspective,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health Organization’s Emergency Health Program, at a briefing on Monday. “The problem is what happens when you get to your destination, what you’re exposed to, and what you take home.”

Health officials are also warning of unnecessary travel, especially with the advent of the highly contagious Delta variant as many people vacation abroad to make up for more than a year of pandemic lockdown at home.

“Nobody says it is not safe to take a vacation, but we try to say that it is not time to open up to it completely,” said Ryan.

– CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

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Business

Airways begin repairing Boeing 737 Max planes grounded by electrical drawback

Airlines start repairing Boeing 737 Max planes grounded by electrical problem

United Airlines aircraft, including a Boeing 737 MAX 9 model, are pictured at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas on March 18, 2019.

Loren Elliott | Reuters

Boeing announced Thursday that shipments of 737 Max planes would resume “within a week” after federal officials approved a fix to an electrical problem while US airlines begin repairing dozen of grounded jets.

The Federal Aviation Administration cleared the repair of the manufacturing defect that put more than 100 aircraft into service last month.

Boeing had halted shipments of Max planes it had already manufactured to solve the problem. This has been the company’s most recent obstacle in generating much-needed money.

Boeing stock closed 0.8% after briefly rising to session highs of more than 3%.

The Max planes were on the ground worldwide for 20 months until last November after two fatal crashes. The electrical problem has nothing to do with issues that resulted in the grounding after the crashes between March 2019 and November 2020.

The airlines have been keen to get the planes back in service to meet the resurgent demand for travel as more and more customers are vaccinated against Covid-19 and the attractions reopen.

United Airlines has begun repairs to the aircraft and expects the 17 affected Max jets “to be put back into service in the coming days when we complete our inspection process and ensure that these aircraft meet our strict safety standards”. The Chicago-based airline has a total of 30 Maxes in its fleet.

American Airlines has also started repairs and expects its 18 Max planes that need to be repaired to be back in service in the next few days. Southwest Airlines said work on each aircraft will take two to three days and that “it will take about three weeks to complete compliance work”.

The Dallas-based Southwest has 32 Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft that were grounded last month out of a total fleet of 64.

The FAA announced April 29 that it is investigating how the electrical problem occurred. Officials said the manufacturing flaw that occurred after a design change in 2019 resulted in inadequate electrical grounding in some areas of the cockpit, which could ultimately affect systems such as engine ice protection if left unchecked.

The agency also said it is reviewing the Boeing process for minor design changes.

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Business

Face masks requirement for planes, buses and trains prolonged via mid-September

Biden signs order requiring travelers wear masks on planes and at airports as pandemic rages

Passengers, almost all with face masks, board an American Airlines flight to Charlotte on May 3, 2020 in New York City.

Eleanor Sens | AFP | Getty Images

Are you traveling this summer? Don’t forget your mask.

The Transportation Security Administration on Friday expanded a federal obligation requiring travelers to wear face masks on buses, trains, commercial flights and at airports. The requirement expired on May 11th and is now valid until September 13th.

In February, by order of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency demanded that people over the age of 2 wear masks on flights, buses, trains and public transport.

There are exceptions for some disabilities, the TSA said. Fines for refusing to adhere to the rules start at $ 250 and go up to $ 1,500 for repeated violations.

Airlines have urged passengers to wear masks for much of the past year as Covid-19 continued to spread, but unions have pushed the Biden administration for a federal mask mandate to aid cabin crews tasked with enforcing the rules. The airlines have banned more than 2,000 passengers for non-compliance with mask requirements.

Airlines for America, an industry group representing most of the major US airlines, welcomed the expansion of the mask requirement and said that “the federal mandate for face-covering has greatly strengthened the ability of our flight crews to enforce these requirements on-board.”

The Federal Aviation Administration introduced a “zero tolerance” policy for recalcitrant travelers in January after a surge in incidents, many of which affected travelers refusing to wear masks.

“Mask compliance is key to air travel confidence as we are on the road to recovery, which includes international travel,” said Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the union that Cabin crews at United, Spirit and other agents representing a dozen airlines said in a statement following the decision.

“We are also responsible for ensuring that aviation does not contribute to the spread of the virus or any other variant. We applaud Administrator Pekoske and the Biden Administration for taking steps to ensure we can better dismantle,” Nelson said.

About half of adults in the United States are at least partially vaccinated, according to federal data. Airline executives have reported higher bookings since vaccines were introduced and more tourist attractions reopened.

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Newer Planes Are Offering Airways a Trove of Helpful Information

Newer Planes Are Providing Airlines a Trove of Useful Data

This article is part of our new series of Currents, which examines how rapid advances in technology are changing our lives.

With fewer flights and even fewer passengers, the coronavirus pandemic created a number of challenges for airlines. Some have gone out of business, others barely survive as global passenger traffic is around 50 percent of 2019 levels.

With no passengers to fill them, airlines have retired their older planes faster than normal. The 1,400+ aircraft parked in 2020 and may not go back into service is more than double the number of aircraft that would normally be retired in a single year. This is the result of a 10-year aviation forecast by the management consulting firm Oliver Wyman. The result will be a more modern fleet, the report says.

David Marty, director of marketing for digital solutions at Airbus, found in a half-full observation that aircraft that remain in airline fleets are younger, more fuel-efficient aircraft with lower carbon dioxide emissions.

Thanks to new engine technology and lighter structures and components, the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 use 20 to 25 percent less fuel than the aircraft they are replacing, according to manufacturers.

The other major change is digital. Each new generation of aircraft can collect more data with sensors and circuitry that – like a giant Fitbit – track the health of the aircraft from nose to tail.

For example, on a particular flight, an airline can calculate how much carbon it is emitting and which aircraft components may need attention upon arrival.

As the proportion of modern aircraft in airline fleets increases, so will the amount of data available. And the airplane only contributes part of the growing flow of information.

“The world is changing a lot and airplanes are definitely providing more and more information,” said Vincent Capezzuto, chief technology officer for Aireon, an aircraft tracking and surveillance company. New tracking signals are flight specific, but can also provide information useful for air traffic control services and airport arrival planning to control the flow of traffic in the air and at airports.

In a novel application, Aireon was commissioned by the FAA to monitor all Boeing 737 Max flights in order to capture any anomalies for analysis. This is in response to the Max’s nearly two-year grounding after two fatal crashes. The Max was put back into service at the end of 2020. (Some of the planes were re-grounded this month due to a possible electrical problem.)

Kevin Michaels, Managing Director of AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace consultancy, points to the latest Airbus airliner, the A350. Usually 800 megabytes of data are recorded per flight. The Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger aircraft, which went into service in 2007, can only deliver half of it.

“There’s a lot more data and better algorithms,” said Michaels.

At Delta Air Lines, due to new technologies, the airline has developed apps that pilots use on a tablet such as Flight Weather Viewer to avoid flying through turbulence. It was first introduced in 2016 and has been updated over the years as new features became available.

With the Flight Family Communication app launched in 2018, all employees working on a particular flight can communicate with one another, from ground crew to flight crew. John Laughter, the airline’s operations manager, says one of the best ways to use the new data is to predict when parts will fail so maintenance can be carried out proactively.

“I’ve been with Delta since 1993 and almost everything we did back then was looking back,” he said. “We’d have a bug and would ask, ‘How do we fix this?'”

Today, Mr. Laughter says that “data scientists examine the data” so they can plan what would previously have been an unscheduled and potentially disruptive repair.

In business today

Updated

April 22, 2021, 4:15 p.m. ET

AirAsia executives in Malaysia say preventing delays is critical as their business model relies on planes not spending more than 25 minutes at the airport gates. With 10 different units involved in dispatching a flight, anything slowing the progress of any of these people can trigger a cascade of delays.

By applying artificial intelligence to the data it collects, AirAsia has also seen small savings in fuel and labor costs, which add up, said Javed Malik, the airline’s group chief operations officer. “It could save millions at the end of the year.”

Still, many airlines have found it difficult to keep up with the volume of information.

“Airlines and planes are like oil rigs in the ocean,” said Yann Cabaret, vice president of strategy, product and marketing at SITA, a non-profit aviation technology technology. “And their data is like crude oil. You can’t do much with it. You need people and technology to refine this data so that they can take advantage of it. “

It’s not that airlines haven’t introduced new technology in the past.

For example, computer reservation systems were state of the art in the early 1960s. But six decades later, airlines are still trying to find a way to sell tickets and other products with the pizazz that web-savvy buyers have come to expect. The rapid pace of change can create hurdles.

“We are tied to old systems for which our IT providers have developed specific applications,” said Frederic Sutter, head of a data exchange platform offered by Airbus called Skywise. “When you had to mix the different data from different systems, the industry wasn’t equipped for it.”

To solve this problem, Airbus began selling customers access to Skywise’s cloud-based platform in 2017, where they could share information about their aircraft, suppliers and components with other airlines.

One hundred and thirty airlines, including AirAsia, upload their unidentified data to the platform “so that they can compare themselves to the entire fleet,” said Sutter.

Airbus is also a beneficiary. “The data collected and shared enables us to validate our design and prepare for the next generation of aircraft,” he said. Should reports from the fleet reveal unexpected problems, the company can begin planning design changes if necessary.

Global companies like Airbus, Google, and IBM have found a potentially lucrative market for selling technology services to airlines as the airlines, some of which have been around for a century, are tied to what Vik Krishnan, a McKinsey & Company partner, is , who works in the travel sector, calls systems “obsolete”.

Newer airlines like AirAsia are not affected by this story. It was only 5 years old when its current owners bought it in 2001. After adding a long-haul airline and acquiring a handful of regional airlines, the company decided to merge its disparate data and create what Mr. Malik called the “Connected Ecosystem. “

The airline wanted all information to be accessible under one roof and visible across departments so that, for example, a passenger’s biometric information – such as fingerprints or facial recognition – could be used for security and boarding at the airport, but also for purchasing products from AirAsia E-commerce platforms. This use of technology could create privacy issues that governments may need to address.

“These are separate, different technologies. Payments and biometrics that need to work seamlessly in the background for the customer to have a great experience, ”said Malik.

In 2018, AirAsia partnered with Google to become one of the first airlines to move their data to the cloud. Other airlines followed. Delta and IBM announced a deal earlier this year to move both customer and in-house apps to the public cloud while they work on strategies for dealing with increasing amounts of aircraft information.

“Airlines have greater capacity to consume or process the data or deploy artificial intelligence while they sift through and gather the information they need,” said Dee Waddell, IBM’s global director for travel and transportation.

But as they move further into the digital age, airlines are also learning that being part of big data is not without its drawbacks. The burden of managing everything is one of them.

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Health

Empty Center Seats on Planes Reduce Coronavirus Danger in Examine

Empty Middle Seats on Planes Cut Coronavirus Risk in Study

Leaving the center seats vacant during a flight could reduce passenger exposure to coronavirus in the air by 23 to 57 percent. This is what researchers reported in a new study that modeled how aerosolized virus particles spread in a simulated aircraft cabin.

“Next is always better in terms of exposure,” said Byron Jones, a mechanical engineer at Kansas Sate University and co-author of the study. “It’s true in airplanes, it’s true in cinemas, it’s true in restaurants, it’s true everywhere.”

However, the study may have overestimated the benefits of having empty center seats by ignoring the wearing of masks by passengers.

“It’s important for us to know how aerosols spread in airplanes,” said Joseph Allen, a ventilation expert at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health who was not involved in the study. But he added, “I am surprised that this analysis is now being published and it makes a big statement that the center seats should be left open as a risk mitigation approach if the model does not take into account the effects of masking. We know that masking is the most effective measure to reduce emissions from inhalation aerosols. “

Although scientists have documented several cases of coronavirus transmission on airplanes, airplane cabins are generally low risk environments as they tend to have excellent ventilation and filtration.

Still, concerns about the risk of air travel have swirled since the pandemic began. Planes are tight environments, and full flights make social distancing impossible. As a precaution, some airlines have started keeping the center seats free.

The new paper, published Wednesday in the Weekly Report on Morbidity and Mortality, is based on data collected at Kansas State University in 2017. In this study, the researchers sprayed a harmless aerosol virus through two mock aircraft cabins. (One was a five-row section of an actual single-aisle aircraft, the other a model of a wide-bodied double-aisle aircraft.) The researchers then monitored how the virus spread in each cabin.

For the new study, researchers from the state of Kansas and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used the 2017 data to model how passenger exposure to a virus in the air would change if each middle seat was in one 20-row entrance cabin would remain open.

Depending on the specific modeling approach and the parameters used, keeping the middle seats empty reduced the overall load on the passengers in the simulation by 23 to 57 percent compared to a fully occupied flight.

“Some airlines have been working with a vacant seat policy and this study supports the effectiveness of this intervention in conjunction with other existing measures,” a CDC spokesman said in a statement emailed.

This reduction in risk resulted from increasing the distance between an infectious passenger and others, as well as reducing the total number of people in the cabin, reducing the likelihood that an infectious passenger would be on board at all.

The laboratory experiments on the spread of viruses in aircraft cabins were conducted several years before the current pandemic began and did not take into account any protection that wearing masks could provide.

Masking would reduce the amount of virus infectious passengers release into cabin air and would likely reduce the relative benefit of keeping the center seats open, said Dr. All.

Dr. Jones agreed. “In general, I would think that wearing a mask would make this effect a lot less pronounced,” he said. He also noted that mere exposure to the virus does not mean that anyone will be infected by it.

“To what extent a reduction in exposure could reduce the risk of transmission is not yet known,” said the CDC spokesman.

The cost-benefit analysis is difficult for airlines. However, from a purely health perspective, keeping the center seats open would be helpful to create a buffer between an infectious person and others nearby, according to Alex Huffman, an aerosol scientist at the University of Denver who was not involved in the study . “Removal is important, both for aerosols and for droplets,” he said.

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Airways beef up U.S. summer season schedules with huge planes

Airlines beef up U.S. summer schedules with big planes

The twin-ship Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner has a range of more than 7,500 nautical miles, enough to fly passengers from Los Angeles to Sydney on a 15-hour non-stop trip. This summer, American Airlines plans to use the 285-seat aircraft on several much shorter routes such as Chicago to Orlando.

With many overseas travel still affected by the pandemic, American and Delta Air Lines are choosing to use some of their large jetliners on domestic routes or for shorter international trips.

This is one of the ways airlines are rethinking their service in the pandemic. The planes are said to fly long distances and fill up with higher paid passengers traveling abroad. When the demand for international travel returns, as Americans anticipate this fall, the airline would end the practice.

“It’s like buying a Porsche and driving it to church on Sundays,” said Brian Znotins, American’s vice president of network planning.

Znotins said there is usually at least one domestic service that operates wide-body jets on high-demand routes or positions planes in cities for long-haul flights, but the airline is using them to reinforce domestic service.

Domestic vacation travel has largely recovered from a year ago, according to airline executives, but international bookings and services are on the decline due to quarantine requirements, closed attractions, and direct entry bans common to most non-nationals from much of Europe entering the United States. still pressed and vice versa.

The Fort Worth-based American plans to fly some Boeing 777s, his largest aircraft, from his Miami hub to Los Angeles International Airport and John F. Kennedy in New York this summer. It will use 787 between some flights between Philadelphia and Orlando and to Las Vegas from Philadelphia, Chicago and Miami.

Delta uses Boeing 767s, which are normally used for long-haul international flights on routes from Atlanta to Denver, Las Vegas, San Diego and its Minneapolis-St. Paul. These aircraft and the Airbus A330 will serve Hawaii from Seattle, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis-St. Paul, but also shorter flights like the Twin Cities to Phoenix.

The idea is “to fill the biggest boat you can find with very cheap seats and hope the fares come in,” said Robert Mann, industry analyst and former airline manager.

American is optimistic.

“During the Easter and Spring break, the widebodies we run did well on those days, but if you have a random Tuesday in mid-April, you won’t really get very crowded anywhere in the system, let alone on a widebody,” Znotins said. “But as we approach Memorial Day and summer like a typical year, all the days of the week fill up and this is where we see the higher occupancy factors.”

American Airlines will operate a total of 3,104 double-aisle aircraft flights on domestic routes in July and August, up from 563 a year ago and 2,846 consulting firms in the same months of 2019, according to data from an airline company Ascend by Cirium.

The airline has been one of the most aggressive of the major airlines, having reopened on the recovery of domestic vacation travel, the bright spot on travel as coronavirus cases have declined due to their spike and vaccination rates, and attractions like Disneyland. American said Tuesday it expects to restore capacity to more than 90% of its domestic 2019 schedule this summer.

“America’s current strategy seems to be to fly as much as possible and worry about the returns later,” said Brett Snyder, a former airline manager who runs an air travel assistance company, Cranky Concierge and who writes to Cranky Flier Blog.

Single aisle aircraft like those of the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 families still make up the vast majority of flights in the United States, including those in America. Single-aisle mainline jet departures will increase in July and August from 92,391 in the previous year and 155,084 in the summer of 2019 to a total of 189,862, according to Cirium data. At American, Delta and United AirlinesThese types of aircraft account for more than 70% of the planned domestic capacity in July and August, similar to what was seen before the pandemic.

United typically flies more domestic flights on wide-body aircraft than other US airlines. That year, however, flying was hampered by the effective landing of its Boeing 777 fleet with Pratt and Whitney 4000 engines, pending inspection after a failure shortly after a flight to Hawaii that took off from Denver in February.

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United Provides to Its Orders for Boeing 737 Max Planes

United Adds to Its Orders for Boeing 737 Max Planes

United Airlines announced Monday that the order for the Boeing 737 Max has been expanded to include 25 aircraft, bringing the total to 180 for the coming years, and that the delivery time has been cut to position itself for the expected recovery in travel.

The expanded contract is the latest vote of confidence in the aircraft, which has only just started flying again after two crashes left a global ground for nearly two years. This is also good news for Boeing, which is working to get out of the Max Crisis and, more recently, engine problems aboard some of its 777 aircraft.

“With these new aircraft, we can become more competitive,” said Andrew Nocella, United’s chief commercial officer. “It’s the right plane at the right time.”

United plans to deploy the jet across North America and Hawaii, replacing smaller aircraft when demand returns, Nocella said. It’s also more economical than its predecessor, a major asset for the airline as it seeks to reduce its carbon footprint. And the plane will help United resume their strategy of strengthening connections at mid-country hub airports in Houston, Chicago and Denver, he said.

“This will allow us to get back on track when we get out of the pandemic,” Nocella said.

The industry is preparing for a travel rebound once coronavirus vaccinations are widespread and the pandemic is tamed. The beleaguered 737 Max has been updated and is ready to fly again after a total of 346 people were killed in crashes in Indonesia in October 2018 and Ethiopia in March 2019.

Updated

March 1, 2021, 12:38 p.m. ET

After the second accident, the Max, a star of the Boeing fleet, was scrutinized by lawmakers, regulators and the news media around the world. In November, the Federal Aviation Administration became the first global regulator to lift a ban on the jet. Boeing and the airlines using the Max had to install software updates, change wiring, and make other changes to the aircraft before they could fly again. Regulatory agencies in other countries followed, and the Max has already performed thousands of flights.

United, which has 30 Max aircraft in its fleet, only put the aircraft back into service a few weeks ago. The airline expects 24 this year, followed by 40 next year and 54 in 2023.

The Max has a list price of more than $ 120 million, but it often sells for a cheaper price, especially on large orders. Industry analysts say airlines have the leverage to bring that price down further as slowing travel has eased the pressure to build fleets. The manufacturer has shipped more than 400 Max jets to customers since the aircraft first flew paying passengers in 2017. Almost 4,000 orders were still pending.

Unlike its competitors, United has not removed any mass aircraft from its fleet throughout the pandemic. This is part of a strategy aimed at providing maximum flexibility in restoring the trip, Nocella said. With another round of federal payroll for the industry looking likely, United will also be able to keep much of its workforce through September. Two previous rounds of federal aid have largely helped airlines avoid vacation days and layoffs.

While Monday’s order shows United is gearing up for a rebound from the trip, a significant rebound is likely still a long way off. Mr Nocella said United hopes to reach a “tipping point” by the end of the year where the tourist recovery will accelerate rapidly. At the moment, United and its peers continue to lose money every day, even as they take care of what few travelers have left.

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Health

Biden indicators order requiring vacationers put on masks on planes and at airports as pandemic rages

Biden signs order requiring travelers wear masks on planes and at airports as pandemic rages

Passengers, almost all with face masks, board an American Airlines flight to Charlotte on May 3, 2020 in New York City.

Eleonore Sens | AFP | Getty Images

President Joe Biden signed an ordinance on Thursday requiring masks to be worn on planes, trains, buses, and airports as coronavirus infections continue to rise.

The Trump administration declined to use masks for air travel and other transportation, leaving private companies to set their own guidelines, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention having repeatedly recommended their use.

That left flight attendants and other staff to enforce the rules. Unions pushing for a federal mask mandate cheered Biden’s orders.

“What a difference leadership makes! We applaud President Biden’s nationwide approach to fighting the virus and getting out of this pandemic,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the country’s largest flight attendants union. in a statement. “Today’s action by the executive regarding a mask mandate for interstate travel, including airports and airplanes, will provide much-needed support to flight attendants and aviation workers on the front lines.

Julie Hedrick, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents American Airlines cabin crews, also welcomed the move.

“As passengers travel on different airlines and through different airports, they deserve clear expectations of the rules. We thank President Biden for addressing this immediately,” she said in a statement.

All major US airlines require travelers to wear masks on board – a policy that extends to airports. Airline executives say the vast majority of customers follow the rule, but they vow to take a tough line against those who refuse. In the past week, airlines banned more than 2,500 people from flying for refusing to wear face covers. The FAA noted that some rare cases have even turned violent.

The FAA warned earlier this month to crack down on recalcitrant behavior and travelers who fail to follow instructions from the crew and fined those travelers up to $ 35,000.

Air travelers, including citizens, are recently required to show a negative Covid-19 test result before flying to the U.S. from overseas, Biden ordered, reiterating a CDC policy revealed last week. This rule takes effect on Tuesday.

Biden said travelers would have to self-quarantine upon arrival.