Felony Battery Aboard Southwest Airlines Flight from Sacramento to San Diego

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Yeah I get it. These days, this is just another incident of passenger disruption to scheduled commercial aviation. It's just one of 477 passenger misconduct incidents on Southwest Airlines in the past 5 weeks. This one seemed particularly vicious though. And it may become a tipping point. The union representing SWA flight attendants is now referring to an "epidemic of aggression and assault" on their flights. I suspect Southwest is not alone.

A Southwest flight attendant loses two teeth after an altercation with a passenger | CNN Travel

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"According to witnesses, an altercation between a passenger and a flight attendant had taken place during the flight. During the altercation, the passenger struck the flight attendant, causing serious injuries".

The reported assailant is a 28 year old woman. The flight attendant sustained facial injuries and lost two teeth. Local news reports that the assault occurred when the flight attendant instructed the woman to sit down after she stood up prematurely before the aircraft reached the gate.

Statement from the Port Of San Diego:
Felony Battery Aboard Southwest Airlines Flight | Port of San Diego...

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Belarusian flight B2869 from Minsk to Barcelona returned to Minsk this morning after being advised by Polish air traffic control that it did not have clearance to enter French airspace....

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The actual AD doesn't seem to mention this; however it describes the problem as "degradation in bonds essential for the electrical grounding of equipment". The most common cause of this type of bonding failure is inappropriate metal-on-metal contact. If two dissimilar metals are in contact with some kind of electrolyte present, the less noble metal will corrode. It could be as simple as replacing (say) steel rivets with aluminum screws. This would be a rookie mistake for a Boeing electrician though, so I suspect it's more complex than this.

2021-09221.pdf (federalregister.gov)...