Acting out on a Brazilian flight just got a lot more expensive. As of this Monday, Resolution 800/2026 from Brazil's civil aviation regulator, Anac, lets airlines fine disruptive passengers up to R$17,500 (roughly $3,400 at September 2026 exchange rates) and ground the worst offenders for up to 12 months, across every domestic carrier at once.
What actually took effect Monday
Anac's board debated and voted the rule on Friday, March 6, and the resolution carries an official date of March 9 — but regulators held back the toughest piece, the fines, suspensions and airline-to-airline data sharing, until this week. One narrower provision covering operational procedures had already been in force since April; everything else in the penalty package only kicked in on September 14, according to state outlet Agência Brasil.
The rule applies to regular domestic flights and to the areas of Brazilian airports that process connecting international passengers, though it doesn't reach international flights themselves.
Three tiers, three different consequences
Not every bad moment on a plane leads to a ban. Using a phone when it's barred, causing a disturbance, or ignoring routine crew instructions is treated, in principle, as a warning-level offense.
The next tier — smoking on board, verbally attacking another passenger, deliberately damaging equipment — lets an airline end the travel contract on the spot: it no longer has to get that passenger to their destination or provide a hotel and meals, though the person can still fly again later with that or another carrier, according to a breakdown from Mercado & Eventos.
The steepest tier covers what InfoMoney lists as the most severe conduct: physical violence against crew or other passengers, handling weapons or explosives, trying to reach the cockpit, sexual harassment, a false bomb threat, or deliberately disabling a safety device. Only those cases trigger the six-to-twelve-month flight ban and a spot on the shared national list.
A blacklist airlines maintain themselves
The rule's most disruptive feature is that registry itself: airlines, not Anac, are the ones who have to log it and check it before selling a ticket, so someone grounded by one carrier can't simply fly with a competitor. The agency collects the reports, investigates and levies the administrative fine, but doesn't run the list day to day, aviation outlet PANROTAS noted, adding that a ban applies across every domestic carrier, not just the one where the incident happened.
Reporting deadlines scale with severity: immediate notice for the most serious cases, up to five days for mid-tier offenses, and up to 30 days for everything else, per Tribuna de Jundiaí. Airlines and airport operators also now have to keep records of serious and severe cases for five years, a new requirement built to support any legal challenges that follow.
What gets refunded — and what doesn't
A suspended passenger is entitled to a refund on future segments they'd already booked, with one clear exception: the flight where the incident happened isn't reimbursed. Remaining segments tied to a contract an airline ended over a serious-tier offense aren't refunded either, InfoMoney reported — a distinction that separates a forward-looking suspension refund from the loss tied to a contract that's already been closed out.
A curve regulators are trying to bend
The rule responds to a trend that's been worrying the industry. Figures airline association Abear presented to Congress show incidents climbing from 1,019 in 2023 to 1,061 in 2024 and then jumping to 1,764 in 2025 — a 66% spike in that final year. Between January and June of 2026 alone, Brazil had already logged 881 cases, 154 of them in the highest-risk category — the one capable of compromising a flight's operational safety — up 22% from the same stretch the year before, according to a breakdown from Agenda do Poder.
Anac's president-director, Tiago Faierstein, unveiled the rule Monday alongside national flight-crew union president Tiago Rosa, Abear's chief executive Juliano Noman, and Brazil's Minister of Ports and Airports, Tomé Franca, at a press briefing covered by Metropoles. "Security is a non-negotiable matter. We have to get ahead of this and build a rule that brings these numbers down," Faierstein said of the resolution's goal, in remarks carried by Gazeta Brasil.
Crew representatives argue the tougher penalties only work if flight staff also get more backing on the job. "We can't allow verbal or physical abuse, or passengers trying to force open emergency exits," Rosa warned, adding that rules alone won't help if crews lack the conditions to actually enforce them.
Anac has said it will publish a review of how the rule is working two years after it took effect, leaving room to adjust the penalty scale if unruly-passenger numbers keep climbing.
