FAA refers 80 unruly airline passenger cases to FBI for possible criminal prosecution, officials say

• The FAA sent 80 unruly passengers cases to the FBI for possible criminal charges, officials said.
• Out of the 80 cases, 43 were recorded this year and 37 happened in 2021, NBC News reported.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has sent 80 unruly airline passenger cases to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for potential criminal prosecution, officials told NBC News on Wednesday.

The FAA confirmed the news to Insider in a statement.

The FBI will further examine the cases, which happened between mid-January last year through to Tuesday, for possible criminal charges, officials told NBC News.

Out of the 80 incidents, 37 occurred in 2021 and 43 were recorded this year, officials told NBC News.

These were the worst incidents out of almost 6,500 unruly passenger cases reported since January 2021, the FAA told Fox Business.

Out of the nearly 6,500 cases, around 4,600 of them involved passengers not wearing a face mask when required, the FAA told Reuters.

The agency has recorded almost 400 cases of unruly passengers on airplanes since the start of this year, according to its website. More than 250 of these reports were related to passengers not following the federal mask mandate, per the FAA website.

The announcement comes after Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian requested to create a no-fly list of disruptive passengers, something which a group of Republican senators, including Ted Crus and Mike Lee, want blocked.