Exclusive interview: DOT Secretary Duffy explains how he’s making flying great again in time for Thanksgiving
Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images
“Did people start kind of acting more like animals because they were treated more like animals? Or did airline crews have to crack down and treat people like that because of the actions they were seeing?” Bedford asked. “There was an obvious breakdown during COVID.”
Duffy suggested that the transformation of flight attendants into mask-enforcers during the pandemic helped cultivate a more confrontational environment, which — when coupled with disrespect from the airlines and from passengers alike, signaled by the latter with an apparent increase in slovenly dress — helped grease the slide into relative barbarism.
Among the alleged incidents referred by the FAA to the FBI last year were sexual assaults, attacks on fellow passengers and/or flight staff, instances of inappropriate touching of minor fliers, and incidents where passengers attempted to breach the cockpit.
‘I think we can be better.’
While physical violence and inappropriate touching are obvious examples of the behavior the Trump administration seeks to curb in air travel, Duffy noted that incivility finds various forms — such as passengers taking their shoes off and placing them on the seats in front of them, playing movies on high volume without headphones, and touching other fliers’ TV screens with their bare toes.
“I want to have a conversation with America that says, ‘Listen, let’s call our better angels. Let’s all be better when we travel together,'” Duffy told Blaze News.
The DOT secretary emphasized that it’s necessary not only to curb nasty behavior but to embrace good behavior: “Let’s dress more respectfully. Let’s be nicer to one another. Let’s say please and thank you.”
Duffy suggested, for instance, that if capable men see a woman struggling to put her bag into the overhead bin, they should man up and step in to help.
“I think we can be better — better humans, better Americans, better travelers,” the secretary said.
A change in general behavior could make traveling a whole lot less vexatious, not only daily where the TSA’s current volume is roughly 2.48 million souls, but this week — a week where the Transportation Security Administration expects to screen more than 17.8 million people from Nov. 25 to Dec. 2, with over 3 million souls on Sunday alone.
“We are projecting that the Sunday after Thanksgiving will be one of the busiest travel days in TSA history,” Adam Stahl, a senior official at the TSA, said in statement.
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