Courts don't make up numbers out of thin air. I expect this is the additional operating costs that Delta could justify to the court.

For example, here is an old post with estimates of fuel per hour for different aircraft. Even adding in another climbout, there is no way this diversion cost over $9000 just for fuel.

How Much Fuel Do Different Aircraft Burn? - Airliners.net

You get 20K - 30K a year from dying relatives?

Not just another climb out, but another landing. Also time added to route due to diverting from planned route, and anytime in approach pattern/holding. Plus now needing to have enough fuel to meet legal reserve requirements in case of needing to divert to alternate. Which now must be meet based on current forecast conditions at takeoff from TUL.

An extra take off, landing, taxi, I wouldn't be surprised at all it was an extra $9K in fuel...you can't just take someone's educated guess for fuel burn at cruise for what's needed at take off and landing and taxi time.

And that's still before wages, vouchers, airport landing fees, etc.

I bet the true cost of the diversion was likely in the neighborhood of $90k when everything is factored in, and the court charged him 10% as virtually no one has $90K .
https://thepointsguy.com/guide/how-m...plane-diverts/

If a diversion only cost the airlines $9K they'd happen WAY more often.

Perhaps he gets diverted 2 or 3 times a year?

Delta does the right thing to discourage jackasses from behaving like this and half the people here have to complain about it.

If $9k is not a big deterrent to you and others, then I guess you all will stick with Delta if they raise all economy class tickets to at least $9k while the other airlines stay in hundreds, right? It's no big deterrent afterall.

This is a really important point, and is part of a debate in legal theory and criminal justice theory. Do deterrents work or do people break laws/rules because they are in some way out of control of their own behavior?

According to LinkedIn, the guy is a Nuclear Construction Engineer. Somehow I think that DL will get their money. But I agree that $9k seems extraordinarily low in terms of the costs associated with causing a diversion. Surely the lawyers figured out that number (or a % of some number) that worked as part of a plea deal. The article does state that he plead guilty. I'm sure DL had to weigh the costs of fighting a prolonged legal battle to get more cash as well...

Heading down the path of expecting an individual pax to cover the full and true cost of a diversion seems dangerous to me. I'm sure that after everything is said and done it was more than $9K, especially if DL elected to offer pax any type of compensation.

Occasional diversions are part of the cost of doing business as an airline. $100K is a loss that will be meaningless on DL's books but could be financially catastrophic for an individual or a family. I'm not saying that the pax should not have some accountability, but I don't think we want to go down the very slippery slope of exposing pax to this type of liability.

Good point. It really does open a whole can of worms.

Isn't it just a matter of contract law? In many other situations you could sue and potentially be awarded consequential damages. But iirc they're excluded in Delta's and most other airline's CoC. Is there anything otherwise special about air travel where those types of damages aren't awarded as a matter of law? I.e. an FAA rule?

I think you're drawing a false parallel here in two ways. First, while aircraft maintenance is considered the airline's fault for the purposes of accommodation, etc., it's nowhere near the level of legal culpability of a drunk and disorderly passenger. It's more akin to a medical emergency, and I don't believe anyone would claim the passenger should reimburse the airline for a diversion for illness. Experientially that's also the case, i.e. when the airline announces that the plain is going MX and we're going to have to stay the night, I'm annoyed, but I take my voucher and go get a good night's sleep, I don't think that the airline messed up - that's part of flying. But when a passenger causes a disruption and we have to divert, I am justifiably angry at that customer because they made a decision to inconvenience me.
The second false parallelism is level of awareness of the financial consequences. A disruptive passenger (especially the ones who say things like "I need to get out of here") are aware that their actions will cost the airline money, so they have culpability of that loss. The airline has no idea that you're going to close a multi-million dollar deal. On this one I'm not sure of the legal ramifications, but it seems to me that there would be less culpability for costs that you had no way of knowing existed compared to ones that are a known quantity (you know the airline has to pay for fuel, personnel, etc)

This could very well be a mental health emergency. In other words, the cause for the diversion could be medical. In fact, unless a pax has become intoxicated and that is the reason for their loss of control, I would suspect that the vast majority of cases in which a pax is so disruptive as to cause a diversion could be very fairly classified as mental health emergencies.

I don't know the details of this particular case, so I'm not commenting on that. I'm just making the point that human behavior is more complex than you suggest and that mental health issues can lead to very real unanticipated (by the pax) medical emergencies.