Coronavirus FAQ: Can An Airline Put You On A No-Fly List For Refusing To Mask Up?

Early this week, Delta Air Lines made news after a plane headed to Atlanta circled back to its gate in Detroit, delaying takeoff. The crew was returning to expel two passengers who had been unwilling to follow a new but quintessential coronavirus rule.

They had refused to don masks.

That transgression is the latest addition to a bevy of infractions that can get you booted from an aircraft — even before contagion racked our world. Those no-nos vary wildly in severity and how often they're enforced, but the theoretical gamut is wide: from a joke about, say, hijacking, to smoking a cigarette ... all the way to more serious acts like transporting illegal contraband like guns or drugs.

And, then there's the 2018 case when a traveler was banned from a United Airlines flight for trying to take an "emotional support peacock" along with her. (She opted to drive across the country instead, a BBC report says.)