Merrick Garland doesn’t want holiday travel to get rowdy. The attorney general directed Justice Department attorneys across the country to quickly and aggressively prosecute violent passengers on planes in a memo Wednesday. Garland wrote that unruly passengers “prevent the performance of critical duties that help ensure safe air travel. Similarly, when passengers commit violent acts against other passengers in the close confines of a commercial aircraft, the conduct endangers everyone aboard.” The Federal Aviation Administration has initiated more than 900 investigations into in-flight incidents over the past year, the agency’s highest total since 1995, the year it began recording them, and orders of magnitude more than the previous five years combined. Multiple high-profile viral videos have shown chaos aboard planes as fliers return to the skies following the pandemic-induced dip in air travel.
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