Airlines and travelers alike have cheered the end of the federal mask mandate on flights, but a second pandemic-era policy is here to stay.

On Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it would be making its zero-tolerance policy towards unruly behavior permanent. In a statement, FAA Acting-Director Billy Nolen said the policy is aimed at flight safety and is meant to deter violence or misbehavior on all flights.

"Behaving dangerously on a plane will cost you; that’s a promise,” said Nolen. "Keeping our zero-tolerance policy will help us continue making progress to prevent and punish this behavior."

There is a noticeable link between the zero-tolerance policy, the mask mandate and unruly behavior on flights. Since airlines began mandating passengers wear masks to combat COVID-19, a number of passengers have at times resisted fiercely enough to ground flights in progress.

Flight crew responsible for enforcing these policies were also in some cases subjected to verbal abuse and violence by noncompliant flyers. Last July, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), the main labor group for these workers, found that one in five attendants experienced a physical incident with an unruly passenger that year.

In January 2021, the FAA announced the zero-tolerance policy as a way to restrain misbehavior. According to data from the agency, there were 1,233 reports of unruly passengers with 797 of them revolving around mask-related incidents. Of these cases, 370 investigations were launched, leading to 192 enforcement cases and 80 others being referred to the FBI for criminal investigation.

While airlines were advocates for rolling back the mask mandate, there has been little open backlash to maintaining the zero-tolerance policy. No airline has yet to comment on the decision and the AFA has been a supporter of the policy since it was first adopted.

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