sbrower

I have limited anecdotal experience (something over 1000 flights on AA, maybe about 2000 flights on all airlines combined). I have never been refused an alcoholic beverage and I have ordered many doubles in coach (no reason to order doubles in First class).

chrisdenver1

I think "morality police" is the exact term. The 1-2 drink per hour is a rule of thumb for operating a motor vehicle within legal limit. There's nothing wrong with consuming more while being responsible (i.e. not a sloppy drunk!). You also have to take into account that no alcohol is/can be consumed during the final descent and during the time it takes to get off the plane, possibly waiting for your luggage and getting to your car (if driving!). There's a lot of time between deplaning and getting to your car (if driving!) that would prevent a FA from being held responsible for any intoxication...if that truly is the case.

aztimm

Perhaps those from pre-merger AA aren't aware that US Airways was in legal trouble, and couldn't serve any alcohol at all on flights to/from New Mexico for a while after this incident:
https://www.abqjournal.com/news/stat...nm11-14-06.htm
https://www.abqjournal.com/news/apalcohol01-29-07.htm
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/usa-...82905201607939

This was discussed extensively in the US Airways forum here on Flyertalk back when it happened.

chrisdenver1

Hmmm...these articles mention people who are visibly and obviously intoxicated. The OP states otherwise, although we have no means to verify. The question remains is it ok for a FA to serve anyone?!?! Or is it ok to refuse just so he/she doesn't want to perform his/her duties!

platbrownguy

No, it doesn't.

This thread is way too long already but the point is that it's a promised benefit that a lot of us enjoy, and sometimes it's all we get. It's the day after Christmas, I just spent 2 great but long days in RSW with family after a whirlwind business trip to HKG; now I'm flying RSW-CLT-TYS for meetings tomorrow, I have a filing deadline tomorrow, and darn it, the only hour of "downtime" I might have is this one in the air before another fire ignites for me to extinguish. So I ordered a double G&T, I drank it, and, about 45 minutes into the flight, I ordered another and decided to kill some time online. And if nothing ignites during the layover, I might just have another drink or two on the next flight. So, I sympathize with OP. If the FA had told me no, I would have been mildly frustrated.

End of the day, these threads always derail into debate over how much is too much, obviously with nondrinkers dominating one side and heavier drinkers dominating the other. You might not understand my enjoyment of gin any more than I understand your enjoyment of cigarettes, trains, airplane tail numbers, political activities, or whatever else you might do that I don't. But that's okay. We're in this for the miles, not the homogeneity.

FAs have enough rules to enforce that they don't need to fabricate any extra. And AA doesn't need a new policy; the CFR is one: don't serve pax who appear intoxicated. It doesn't say "don't serve pax at a rate higher than what you think might lead to intoxication." So long as FAs stick to the stated rule, there won't be many wrongful denials of service--at the very least, it should be a tolerable rate of wrongful denial, without obviously wrongful fabrication of rules like in OPs case.

DCP2016

As someone who sold/served alcohol and could've been fired/arrested for breaking the rules of the company & liquor license or local laws, unless the OP was visibly intoxicated or even showed some sort of sign of being intoxicated, the sky waitress should've done her job and served the OP a drink. AA as far as I know has no stipulations mid-flight on how much they can serve a person other than the fact they can't serve someone visibly intoxicated or a judgement call. As I said, unless this applied to the OP and we aren't getting a truthful story, the sky waitress needs to do her job or find another line of work that doesn't involve serving alcohol.

birddogmax

HLCinCOU

Well, platbrownguy has it right that this thread is too long already, but what the heck...I have many thoughts...

1. Assuming OP's accurate representation, the FA is obviously out of line here. As many have said, it's not like the rule is complicated; don't serve if passenger appears intoxicated. Since that's not the case...

2. As others have noted, the "I don't know you" thing is just weird, and compounds the problem.

3. Nothing remotely like this has ever happened to or around me. I don't have flight numbers like some folks round here, maybe 500? But I've only ever seen FAs deny service to people who did in fact appear intoxicated. None of them has ever been me

4. The whole legal liability rationale as proposed in this thread is nonsense, at least as applied to OP's story. A server/establishment only has liability if they were consciously serving someone they believed to be intoxicated. And that's just in theory; in practice, to actually get a court to do anything you generally have to show some really egregious behavior in terms of serving way too much and ignoring obvious intoxication. Given OP didn't appear intoxicated (and the FA didn't claim he did) none of that applies.

5. Lots of people here clearly misunderstand how intoxication works. Probably the biggest issue is a confusion of rates and levels. You become intoxicated as your blood alcohol level increases; your consumption rate of alcohol changes this level over time. Yes, it's true that the liver can remove alcohol from your blood at the rate of about 1 drink/hour. But exceeding that limit over a short period of time doesn't somehow automatically or instantly intoxicate you. A typical man could take all three of those Tito's in one gulp and still not hit 0.08% BAC. Going by OP's report, at the time he asked for two more Tito's he likely was around half that.

HLCinCOU

No, they couldn't serve alcohol on the ground in NM or in NM airspace. Says so in your links. And it also says that was because the case happened to uncover the fact that they didn't have a NM liquor license, as opposed to any liability issue involved with serving the guy. So it's really not relevant at all to this situation. Or if it is, it's the other way around...your story is actually a pretty good example of why the liability argument as applied here doesn't make sense. Even in a case where the guy was allegedly acting really drunk on the flight and drank way more than OP, your first link has the sheriff saying that they aren't even going to bother trying to figure out who served him what because that's not prosecutable.

TWA884

That's not what I learned in law school. The test is the reasonable person standard; how a hypothetical person who exercises average care, skill, and judgment would act in a like situation is the standard to determine liability.

I'll just add that more often than not an inebriated person is the worst judge of whether he or she appears intoxicated.

HLCinCOU

First, I wasn't really trying to be that precise. Stipulating to your reasonable person standard doesn't make anything else I said about the matter meaningfully different; if OP really was just two drinks deep and not visibly intoxicated, that standard isn't met. Second, this is a state law matter, so there's some variance in the standard used; I don't know where or when you went to law school, but most dramshop laws set a pretty high bar for negligence.

Yeah, but in this case to assume OP was inebriated requires not just a lack of judgment but actual lying on OP's part. He says he didn't drink before the flight and had two airline bottles of vodka. That would not cause him to appear intoxicated to a reasonable person. I don't see any reason to call him a liar.

I maintain that if OP's relation of events is accurate, the airline couldn't have been within a country mile of any state's dramshop laws. You disagree?

newbiztraveler

I remember flying US PHL-PIT weekly 10 years ago. When I was in F, I'd order Jack & Coke as pre-departure beverage and they'd hand me 2 bottles. If I somehow managed to get near finishing, another one would appear without asking, then hand me 2 more before we landed for later (without asking, mind you).

george 3

After reading some of the posts, I recall being on a Saturday "sunset" flight from JFK to LAX (late 1990s) that had maybe twenty people on the old 762. I was in J, and a famous B-list actor with and even more famous drinking problem was in F. He seemed to be in a jolly good mood talking and laughing with the three other people in F, one of whom wanted to chill out about halfway thru the flight. Well to this actor, who was now extremely loud and intoxicated, it was insulting that the passenger didn't want to continue to party and he became quite loud and was upset that he was interrupting his good time. The FAs tried to get him to settle down, and then cut him off. Needless to say he became more vocal and upset and it took the pilot and the lead FA to come out and tell them they were going to land the plane in Denver where he would be arrested if he didn't settle down immediately.

This is an extreme case, but maybe the FA on this flight had an encounter perhaps not as bad as this, and with a person not as famous, and wanted to avoid a repeat of the incident.

hipquest

Coming back from AMS earlier this month the FA felt the need to comment on the fact that I had 4 glasses of wine on an 8 hour flight. I replied, "That's all?". Not a big deal I just found it a bit odd.

LINDEGR

I had a FA JFK-SFO once tell me that if she drank as much as I did, she'd be on the floor. I said, "Awwwww. Thanks for the compliment."