“Ted Cruz” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Audio By Carbonatix
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz likes the liberty that airplanes bring. Last year, while his constituents froze amid power outages during a catastrophic winter storm, he flexed his freedom muscle by flying to Cancun.
Now, Cruz is fighting a push to clip unruly passengers’ wings by placing them on a federal “no-fly” list. The hardline conservative has found support in an unlikely place: a liberal co-host from The View.
On Wednesday, the women of The View chatted about the call to crack down on angry jet-setters. Co-host Sunny Hostin, who regularly criticizes Republicans, said she was “kind of creeped out” that she agreed with the Texas senator about the no-fly proposal.
Hostin argued that separate airlines can share notes instead of having the federal government step in. She also mentioned that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) mask mandate is scheduled to lift next month.
“Now you’ll have people on the no-fly list for a law that’s not even in place, and it deputizes flight attendants,” she said. “They have a very hard job. But who decides which passenger gets put on that no-fly list? It’s a really slippery slope there.”
Cases of disruptive fliers have skyrocketed since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, with the bulk of incidents centered on masking requirements. Reports have circulated of passengers getting duct-taped to their seats mid-flight to prevent them from harming others.
In October, American Airlines banned a customer accused of punching a flight attendant who had to be hospitalized for broken bones in her face. Two months later, a Delta plane was diverted when a passenger allegedly assaulted an air marshal and a flight attendant.
Earlier this month, Delta CEO Ed Bastian wrote the Justice Department asking for the creation of a national no-fly list for passengers convicted of disruptions. Bastian said it would “help prevent future incidents and serve as a strong symbol of the consequences of not complying with crew member instructions on commercial aircraft.”
Some on The View agreed with that take, including Whoopi Goldberg, who seemed to say the government has had to take on the role of “nannies” since “people won’t do the right thing.”
Still, Cruz has joined several other GOP senators, including Florida’s Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, in asking the Justice Department to refrain from rolling out a nationwide no-fly list. They argue it wouldn’t be fair to permanently ban passengers who are merely breaking face-covering mandates; plus, it’d basically be comparing them to terrorists.
“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,” the letter reads. “The TSA was created in the wake of 9/11 to protect Americans from future horrific attacks, not to regulate human behavior onboard flights.”
Certain airline CEOs have also begun to cast doubt on masking mandates. In December, the heads of two North Texas-based airlines appeared to question the efficacy of face coverings on flights.
This isn’t the first time Cruz has targeted airlines for what he views as overreach. He previously blasted the CEO of United Airlines over the company’s employee vaccine mandate.
In 2021, the Federal Aviation Administration counted 5,981 unruly passenger reports, with around 72% stemming from mask-related incidents.
Around 182 unruly passenger investigations on average were initiated each year from 1995 to 2020, according to CNN. But last year saw a 494% increase over the historic average, with 1,081 investigations.
