The airline industry, whose greed is only matched by its outright abusiveness, would like the federal government to maintain a no-fly list of “unruly passengers”.

How about, no. Also, no way in hell.

A group of Republican senators sent a letter to the Justice Department on Tuesday to express “strong opposition” to creating a federal no-fly list for unruly passengers, claiming “the majority of recent infractions on airplanes has been in relation to the mask mandate.”

Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas were among those who signed a letter opposing Delta Airlines’ CEO Ed Bastian’s, request earlier this month that the DOJ create a “no-fly” list for passengers convicted of federal offenses relating to on-board disruptions.

This isn’t even about mask mandates. Those might be gone within a year. If they were gone tomorrow, this would still be a terrible idea.

The only reason the government spends this much time providing security for air travel is because of 9/11. Passengers getting into fights with flight attendants or other passengers is not a matter for special government lists.

The airline industry is small and powerful enough to create such lists if it wants to. 

Airplane travel is a miserable experience largely because of airline policies. And that was true before mask mandates and it’ll be true afterward. 

It should not be the federal government’s job to deal with unhappy, angry, or drunken customers in the equivalent of a flying movie theater that has been shrunk to about a 1000th of the size. 

And the federal government already spends too much time dealing with the matter.

Beyond screening and stopping terrorists, the federal government should not be playing the bully boy for Delta, United, American, or any of the other companies who are leasing the sardine cans smelling of vomit and stale tuna that we call passenger planes. 

What’s next? Federal lists of people who get into fights in bars? Enough already.

Let the airlines manage their own customer service problems the way that they usually do, with two-hour waiting times to reach customer service after overselling seats on a 2 AM flight.