Man fined $9,000 for refusing to wear a mask on a flight out of Salt Lake City

A man who refused to wear a mask on a flight out of Salt Lake City has been fined $9,000 by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The man, whose name and place of residence were not released, was on a Delta flight to Long Beach, Calif., on Feb. 20. He is one of 34 passengers fined a total of $531,545 for unruly behavior in the latest round of penalties announced Thursday, bringing the total fines assessed this year to more than $1 million.

In July, the FAA fined a man $10,500 for refusing to properly wear a face mask on a flight from Provo to Mesa, Arizona.

Since Jan. 1, the FAA has received 3,889 reports of passengers behaving badly, including 2,867 people who refused to comply with the federal mask mandate.

The FAA does not have the power to bring criminal charges, but it has sent a letter to airports requesting they coordinate with local police to bring charges against unruly passengers.

“Every week, we see situations in which law enforcement was asked to meet an aircraft at the gate following an unruly passenger incident,” the letter reads. “In some cases, flight attendants have reported being physically assaulted. Nevertheless, many of these passengers were interviewed by local police and released without criminal charges of any kind. When this occurs, we miss a key opportunity to hold unruly passengers accountable for their unacceptable and dangerous behavior.”

The FAA did not say whether the man fined for his behavior on the Salt Lake City to Long Beach flight was charged criminally in either city. He is one of 21 passengers fined this week for violating the mask mandate, and many of those people face additional fines for other violations.

The largest fine assessed this week were $45,000 against a passenger on a May 24 JetBlue flight from New York to Florida who threw his carry-on luggage at other passengers, refused to stay seated, laid in the aisle and refused to get up, grabbed a flight attendant by the ankles and put his head up her skirt. The passenger was cuffed and the flight made an emergency landing in Richmond, Va.

A passenger on another JetBlue flight — New York to San Francisco on May 16 — was fined $42,000 for refusing to wear a face mask, making contact with and threatening other passengers and “snorting what appeared to be cocaine from a plastic bag.” The flight diverted to Minneapolis.

A passenger on a Southwest flight from Florida to Missouri on Jan. 2 was fined $32,500 for assaulting passengers around him “because someone in his row would not change seats to accommodate his travel partner.”