In a world where everyone now has a camera, a dark side of America’s travel industry has been exposed. People are causing chaos on commercial airlines, and it seems like a new unruly passenger goes viral every week.
Three years ago, Tiffany Gomas became infamous after screaming about a person who “isn’t real” on a flight from Dallas to Orlando. There was also Maxwell Berry, the man who got duct-taped to his seat after groping two flight attendants and punching a third on a Frontier Airlines flight. There’s also been an assortment of hair-pullers, drunks, and people who can’t get through a flight without screaming racial slurs.
SNL’s ‘Delta Disruptive’ sketch
The folks at Saturday Night Live had fun with the shenanigans in the friendly skies, with a pre-recorded sketch in which Ashley Padilla, dressed as Tanya Davis, Delta’s director of in-flight service, announces a new section of the plane for unruly passengers: Delta Disruptive.
“At Delta, we try to provide a safe, enjoyable flight to everyone,” Padilla says. “Unfortunately, incidents of unruly behavior are on the rise. Nobody should have to deal with the stress of a disorderly passenger on their flight. And now, they won’t have to, introducing Delta Disruptive, a new section of the plane, exclusively for crazy people.”
The sketch features host Inde Navarrete playing a Gomas-style character who sees shadow people on the plane and wears pants that expose a bit too much of her posterior. Cast member Mikey Day plays a man who slams the overhead bins ‘til they break and tries to open the emergency exit. Tommy Brennan proudly reads Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler in the Disruptive section, and Sarah Sherman gets taped to a chair for attempting to stab someone with a pen.
Delta Disruptive is safe, at least for those in the other sections
“And if you’re worried that a section full of crazy people won’t be safe, don’t be,” Padilla continues. “All Delta Disruptive flight attendants are the toughest, gayest ex-Spirit Airlines employees who have seen much worse.” Cut to Kennan Thompson trying to take control of the disruptive section by yeeting an emotional support lizard out of the emergency exit.
The sketch raises an important question: are airline passengers getting more disruptive, or has this always been happening and nobody had a camera phone to record it? According to the Federal Aviation Administration, incidents have been rising for nearly a decade. In 2017, there were 544 reports of unruly passengers; in 2021, incidents grew by more than 10 times due to mask mandates, reaching 5,973. In 2026, there have already been over 1,400 reports, but that’s a big drop from the 2021 spike.
Why are passengers more unruly these days? According to an NPR report, it stems from several factors. First, planes are more packed than ever, leading to more stress during boarding and less comfort while flying. There’s been an increase in people drinking and mixing with medications, and finally, in a post-pandemic world, people seem to have shorter fuses. Let’s hope that the number of people who lose their minds on flights starts to drop a bit; we don’t want Delta Disruptive to go from a joke to the new section you have to walk through to get to the bathroom.
