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Comment by markovbot | Hacker News Reader

>allows the Justice Department, Homeland Security, and other federal law enforcement agencies to hack or shoot down privately owned drones if they deem them a threat

they just kinda slipped that one in there... the rest seem pretty benign. Maybe this one:

>increases the penalties for interfering with cabin crew or flight crew

is there any reason to believe that the current penalties aren't working and that increasing them will fix it?

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Maybe benign, but also amusing that this got slipped in too:

> requires the FAA to set up an "Office of Spaceports"

We need somewhere for alien motherships to land and trade their wares. Roswell has too many tourists.

You joke, but there is actual serious regulatory uncertainty with space launches - the Air Force is trying to hand over more and more regulatory authority to civilians, and there's a serious question of which responsibilities belong to the DoC (through the FCC, for historical reasons) and which to the DoT (through the FAA).

There already are some spaceports in the US. So I guess it kind of makes sense to have some oversight. Although I assumed this was just covered by the FAA since they're basically just airplanes at this point.

Seems reasonable to me that they can shoot down drones if they are a threat, at least in theory, hopefully it won't get abused.

I wouldn't count on it. I wouldn't be surprised if some will understand it as 'shoot on sight'.

> hopefully it won't get abused.

Yeah, it will absolutely be abused. Everything is a "threat".

Even my harmless little drone. Come on, yeah it may have been hovering in the middle of the runway, but I would have moved it if a plane was coming.

Sheesh, "threat", what nonsense.

I'm more concerned about things like drones filming police activity being shot out of the sky, because they were "threatening".

Sounds like a fun job - patrolling the airfield with a shotgun, shooting down them drones. Aibo dog will bring you the read body of the drone.

I strongly disagree with the power flight attendants have been given. There is zero recourse when a flight attendant makes a decision, or more often than not, denies you something, flat out lies, or treats you like crap. You can complain to the airline but good luck with that. This new law seems to me that if you even argue with a flight attendant you're kicked off the plane and fined.

When have you had cause to argue with a flight attendant?

Normally I wouldn’t recommend arguing with a flight attendant but just yesterday I was on a flight from PMC - PUQ (Chile on Latam) where I and another passenger had a boarding pass with seat 16-J. Because the other person boarded first the flight attendant basically told me “too bad”. I was standing in the aisle holding up traffic with nowhere to go. I had to get pretty blunt with her to find me another seat or I would continue standing in the aisle holding up the boarding process. What do you know, after I became serious they found me another seat.

This brings up a good point: I would agree with extra penalties for disrupting behaviour while the airplane is underway, especially take off and landing. Boarding and disembarking not so much.

- prohibits airlines from "bumping" passengers who've already boarded a plane; - requires airlines to refund passengers for "services they paid for but did not receive";

It seems to me these points potentially balance out some of the power that flight attendants have, however.

>is there any reason to believe that the current penalties aren't working and that increasing them will fix it?

Good question. I cannot imagine anyone daring to mess with the cabin or flight crew in this age.

The bloomberg article links an inc.com [0] article outlining some incidents of people interfering with flight crew. None of these seem like the sort of thing where the perpetrator stops and weights the potential punishment vs how much they want to interfere with the crew. They mostly seem to be people acting irrationally for one reason or another. One person was drunk, one person decided to respond to a request to put her tray table away by calling the flight attendant the n word.

[0]: https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/the-drunk-passenger-diver...

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