Originally Posted by david4455
I preference this by saying I do not drink so I have no idea of tolerance levels and quanities of consuming alcohol.....
I flew a flight this morning from MSP to SEA on NW. The passenger across the aisle from me in FC consumed 5 cans of Budweiser during the flight and 4 glasses of white wine during meal service.... he never acted intoxicated and was quiet the entire flight....I watched him de-plane and take the train to the main terminal and he never once appeared drunk or off-balance.... but isn't that a lot of alcohol to consume in a 3 hour flight and should the FA have been more attentive to the quanities served?
60 ounces of beer is comparable to a pitcher of beer and is quite a large quantity unless (as others have mentioned) the pax was a frequent drinker of large quantities of alcohol. Another factor is the weight of the pax and how much (and what) the pax had to eat prior to the beer. I have seen 250 pound alcoholics drink a comparable amount of beer in an hour without any noticable effects, and I have seen young, skinny college kids pass out before they finished the fifth beer. The answer is - it depends on many factors.
As you pointed out, he seemed immune to his beer.
As for the wine - airline wine glasses (at least on AA where I fly) tend to be very small and only hold about 3 ounces. Most restaurant wine glasses tend to hold at least twice that much (and some hold much more). Bottom line: He only had a couple "glasses" of wine, together with a meal. Not all that much for many wine drinkers. Obviously not too much for this beer-swilling pax.
Again, body weight, food consumption, tolerance to alcohol (whether he's a drunkard) all matter in determining whether his alcohol consumption made him intoxicated or whether he's able to drink that much without hitting intoxication.
On a dinner transcon, I often have a couple of pre-dinner cocktails, followed by a few glasses of wine with dinner, followed by a couple of after-dinner drinks. Together with a couple bottles of water and a coke or two. In decades of flying, I've never been cut off by a flight attendant and have never been involved in alcohol-related on-board incidents.
I guess there's always a first time, however.
Like the ads say: "Know your limits." Sounds like this guy may have pushed toward his limit on a mere 3 hour flight.
