Exclusive interview: DOT Secretary Duffy explains how he’s making flying great again in time for Thanksgiving

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy ruffled feathers among the professionally offended last week by noting that “traveling has become more uncivilized.”

Duffy cited Federal Aviation Administration data indicating a 400% increase of in-flight outbursts, including physical violence since 2019; 13,800 reported unruly passenger incidents since 2021; and a doubling last year of unruly passenger events compared with 2019.

‘Did people start kind of acting more like animals because they were treated more like animals?’

As part of the Department of Transportation’s broader effort to usher in a “Golden Age of Travel for the American people” — which dovetails with an initiative to beautify and restore key transportation infrastructure — Duffy kicked off a campaign on Wednesday aimed at jump-starting “a nationwide conversation around how we can restore courtesy and class to air travel.”

In an interview with Blaze News editor Christopher Bedford on Monday, Duffy said he’s not necessarily calling for a return to three-piece suits and top hats — just a return to basic decency.

“I think it’s a confluence of things that have come together that have caused people, as they get on airplanes, to be less civil to each other,” Duffy said.

Duffy identified long lines at airports and airlines’ efforts to cram passengers into increasingly smaller spaces as two contributing factors.

According to the advocacy group FlyersRights.org, airline seats have shrunk in recent decades while passengers have largely grown in size, such that as of 2022, “less than 50% of the public can reasonably fit in current seats.”

“The airline is trying to put, you know, a lot of people on an airplane, sell as many tickets as possible, and by doing that, they’re able to reduce the cost of travel and make it affordable for more people,” Duffy said. “But then you feel like you’re cargo.”

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Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images

“Did people start kind of acting more like animals because they were treated more like animals? Or did airline crews have to crack down and treat people like that because of the actions they were seeing?” Bedford asked. “There was an obvious breakdown during COVID.”

Duffy suggested that the transformation of flight attendants into mask-enforcers during the pandemic helped cultivate a more confrontational environment, which — when coupled with disrespect from the airlines and from passengers alike, signaled by the latter with an apparent increase in slovenly dress — helped grease the slide into relative barbarism.

Among the alleged incidents referred by the FAA to the FBI last year were sexual assaults, attacks on fellow passengers and/or flight staff, instances of inappropriate touching of minor fliers, and incidents where passengers attempted to breach the cockpit.

‘I think we can be better.’

While physical violence and inappropriate touching are obvious examples of the behavior the Trump administration seeks to curb in air travel, Duffy noted that incivility finds various forms — such as passengers taking their shoes off and placing them on the seats in front of them, playing movies on high volume without headphones, and touching other fliers’ TV screens with their bare toes.

“I want to have a conversation with America that says, ‘Listen, let’s call our better angels. Let’s all be better when we travel together,'” Duffy told Blaze News.

The DOT secretary emphasized that it’s necessary not only to curb nasty behavior but to embrace good behavior: “Let’s dress more respectfully. Let’s be nicer to one another. Let’s say please and thank you.”

Duffy suggested, for instance, that if capable men see a woman struggling to put her bag into the overhead bin, they should man up and step in to help.

“I think we can be better — better humans, better Americans, better travelers,” the secretary said.

A change in general behavior could make traveling a whole lot less vexatious, not only daily where the TSA’s current volume is roughly 2.48 million souls, but this week — a week where the Transportation Security Administration expects to screen more than 17.8 million people from Nov. 25 to Dec. 2, with over 3 million souls on Sunday alone.

“We are projecting that the Sunday after Thanksgiving will be one of the busiest travel days in TSA history,” Adam Stahl, a senior official at the TSA, said in statement.

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