A California man who was captured on video punching an American Airlines flight attendant during a flight from Mexico to Los Angeles was arrested this week, the Justice Department said, the latest instance of unruly behaviour in the skies as coronavirus restrictions loosen and travel picks up.
The man, Alexander Tung Cuu Le, 33, of Westminster, California, was charged on Thursday with one count of interference with flight crew members, a day after he ran up to a flight attendant and punched him in the back of the head, the Justice Department said in a news release.
Mr Le could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Mr Jelani Lindsey, a lawyer at the Office of the Federal Public Defender who is representing Mr Le, did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment on Thursday.
The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, a union that represents about 24,000 flight attendants at American Airlines, said in a statement that “this violent behaviour puts the safety of all passengers and crew in jeopardy and must stop.”
The charges against Mr Le came as air travellers and crews continue to face an unusually high number of disruptions since the onset of the pandemic.
In 2019, 146 investigations into unruliness on planes were initiated.
So far in 2022, there have been 680 such investigations, according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Last year, much of the aggressive passenger behaviour was tied to mask enforcement. The FAA tallied nearly 6,000 reports of unruly passengers last year, and about 4,300 of them were mask-related, according to the FAA.
The pace appears to have decelerated this year, although it remains above pre-pandemic levels.
As of Tuesday, there have been nearly 2,000 reports.
The Transportation Security Administration said earlier this year that it would stop enforcing a mask mandate on planes after a federal judge in Florida struck down the requirement.
