Should alcohol be limited at airport bars and banned on planes?

The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) most recent data shows cases of violent, unruly passengers increasing aboard flights. Airlines reported more than 5,600 cases of unruly passengers this year through Dec. 14 and more than 4,000 cases of “mask-related incidents.”

“There are more than 5,000 incidents already that have been violent in nature on planes, and so many of them are tied to alcohol,” Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told Yahoo Finance. Markey is on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation which recently held a hearing on “Oversight of the U.S. Airline Industry.”

It was intended to explore the ways U.S. airlines spent $54 billion in taxpayer funds Congress lent and granted to the carriers to avoid layoffs during the COVID-19 pandemic. But much of the testimony from airline CEOs and others included the government-mandated mask policy and updates on the incidents of unruly passengers.

“The problem with aviation right now is the violence towards flight attendants and other aviation workers that has remained constant at record high levels during the biggest crisis our nation has faced in 100 years,” testified Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO. 

Markey said, “Given the level of volatility in the skies that we’re seeing with passengers who are almost ideologically in opposition to any mask mandate, or any control of how people are traveling, leads to inevitably, it’s sad to say, a ban on…