jws026

A good friend and work associate of mine made GLD recently, and is on his way to earning PLT via the DBEQM promotion. He was doing a weekend trip+mileage run, and ran into a weird problem that I've never encountered. Maybe some of the vets here can offer advice? (And, no, the friend isn't me -- I know some people cover weird stories this way. Not my thing.)

He informs me that he boarded a flight at DFW, and sat in the exit row. Behind him, a man comes on, last minute, part of a party of 3 or 4. This guy caught my friend's attention as he sat down hard behind him, smelled of booze strongly, and was unbelievably loud talking gibberish and laughing with one of his friends. He kept carrying on loud enough to be an annoyance for him, and hitting the back of his seat while having a spirited conversation with his seatmate.

According to my friend, his patience finally hit the wall when the guy made a comment about possibly needing the vomit bag, while laughing gut-bustingly loud.

Before the door closed, my friend says he stood up and walked to the nearest FA and made a complaint. She said, paraphrasing his email, "not my problem" and told him to take a seat, they were about to push back.

The FA never came back and did or said anything.

How would you handle this? I told him a polite, _short_ letter to AA.com (wherein you only notify them of an issue and make no request for compensation) is the best bet for 99% of issues you run into.

I'm not sure how I would have handled it onboard, although my general policy on anything that annoys me after I walk down the jetbridge is to shut up and be polite and realize that one wrong word can make an already long day even longer.

skylady

If the FA refused to deal with the problem, you still have recourse with the Captain, while on the ground, or the gate agent. It would be difficult to prove the guy was intoxicated after the fact.

tenn_ace

Agreed. The ship has sailed.

PHL

If the door was still open, and hence the cockpit door was still open, I'd have gotten the Captain's attention and simply said "Captain, I think we have someone on the plane who might have had too much to drink".

Of course, if the FA (or worse, Captain) then went back to him to see what was up he would probably be on his "best" behavior and the ship would still sail anyway. And, now, I'd be the one he and his friends are glaring at for the whole trip....

TrojanHorse

If you weren't there; I'd automatically discount the story by at least 50%; the fact that no one did anything another 50%.. so right now i'm at 25% believing your friends story as being any where near accurate

HNL

Seems like your friend (and possibly yourself) would be happier on WN which is well known for lower tolerance levels.

WalkinBackToTexas

I've flown a lot of years and have seen a lot of loud drunks and have yet to see one thrown off a plane. I hear about an incident from time to time, but from what I can see it's rare and usually only happens when the drunk directly PO's the FA in some way (wont return to seat, demanding more alcohol, etc). The incident as described sounds pretty mild to me.

dcameron

I don't know the details, but while in college, my roommate was denied boarding once because he was too drunk, and another time both he and his girlfriend were actually removed from the plane because they were too drunk. One of the incidents was in Barbados, and the other in Miami, but I don't remember which incident was at which airport. Though I will say that he did have a habit of becoming extremely obnoxious after he had had a few to many.

Blumie

I'm not the biggest fan of people in general, so this guy would have driven me absolutely nuts. But most of us (especially those of us who choose to spend lots of time in airplanes) live our lives in proximity to other people and thus have to deal with behavior that may annoy us -- loud cell phone conversations, body odor, drunkeness. (I've noticed that one behavior I often see that drives me crazy is people who bring three weeks worth of mail onto the plane and use the flight to sort through it. And instead of just making a pile of paper to discard -- perhaps out of privacy concerns -- they rip the paper into tiny pieces. So the entire flight I have to sit there listening to the sound of them tearing paper, which may sound innocuous enough until it continues for two hours.)

So your friend could have ruined this guy's day by getting him tossed from the flight, perhaps preventing him from getting home to his family or getting to work on time or getting to visit his sick mother in the hospital (see, for someone who doesn't like people, I can be quite compassionate!), or your friend could have dealt with this just like the innumerable other annoyances we all deal with on a regular basis.

WalkinBackToTexas

I'd prefer the drunk to the person with body odor any day.

gemac

I'm surprised that your friend has not seen someone drunk on a flight before. I've seen it fairly often, so FAs must see it all the time. Most drunks are happy drunks, but some drunks are mean drunks. The FAs size them up, and if they think a mean drunk won't be able to tone it down, they toss the drunk off the plane. It's a judgement call. A happy drunk isn't really a safety issue, just an annoyance. This guy sounds like he wasn't belligerent, wasn't threatening to punch other passengers, wasn't bothering the bags in the overhead, he was just loud and hitting the back of the seat in front of him. If AA tossed all loud passengers, the flights would be pretty empty, and if hitting the back of the seat in front was a problem, nobody under the age of 12 would be allowed on board.

beachfan

Unfortunately, I don't think just being loud and smelling from booze is something that should trigger action on the part of the FA.

If he is using inappropriate language, hitting your seat back repeatedly, being aggressive somehow, etc., then it crosses the line.

I believe the flight attendant was correct.

Mark_T

Since there was no continued story of bad behaviour in flight one has to assume that the full extend of the 'problem' amounted to being a bit loud during boarding and a bit uncoordinated getting into his seat.

Not exactly worth talking to the FA about.

Efrem

"We are here primarily for your safety."

This is one place that this mantra could come in handy.

If the person is seriously falling-down drunk, you can tell the FA "This is a safety issue because ...," with the "because" being, for example, that he might block others in his row from reaching the exit or anything else that fits the situation. That will get the FA's attention, fast. If they don't do something about it at that point they could be in serious trouble - and they know it. (They also know that anyone who knows enough to put it that way might be in a position to cause them serious trouble if they don't.)

I wouldn't do this just because someone is a bit noisy, and as previously posted the specific situation in this thread is at best hearsay, but it will work.

HNL

Yet that will not stop the holier-than-thou set.