Hi there. I'm at the AMS Marriott & someone here wondered if drinks are free in E on CO Int'l. I don't fly CO, so any input appreciated.

Cheers.

If you fly BusinessFirst, drinks are free; in coach, only non-alcoholic beverages are free.

Its not free. $5 for everything alcoholic.

See this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...ghlight=liqour

No -- It's $5 for anything alcoholic. Many of us wish it was $5 for everything.




[Pedants, unite!]

LOL, Indeed!

I have got a free drink on CO once. Flying MXP-EWR, sitting 2nd row in coach. FA just finished working BF and came to the back to help, and when I handed her my drink coupon, she said it wasn't necessary. I said "really"? She thought for about 5 seconds and thank me for reminding her she's now working Y. And for that she bought me my beer.

When flying CO in Y I always get the pre-paid coupons at the kiosks since you can get them for less if you buy 6 for 25 bucks.

The last time i flew co int'l was in 2001 and they gave me free alcohol then, though i remember getting free alcohol on my Maui trip in dec 2004. That brings up an interesting point about US based airlines and others.

US airlines are trimming down on anything that generates an expense, which obviously puts them at a disadvantage compared to EU/Asian carriers, but I fail to understand why the US carriers can't make that up with better FA service during the flight. That doesn't cost much, why can't the FA's be better, I think they should send them to Singapore Airlines for training their FAs. Man am i impressed, here's one small example on a 7.5 hr flight from brisbane to singapore, i was sitting close to the lavatory right in front of me, every 30 minutes, a FA would come and check and spruce it up by wiping the counter or whatever, it happened every 30 mins, the last time i saw that on a US carrier was never.

The Asian carriers are light years ahead of the rest of the world in service and i am sure that doesn't cost much.

IIRC CO said that it got rid of free booze in international Y in exchange for putting more green things into the meals.

Speaking of the asian carriers and their ability to do things that the US carriers have no concept of, as part of my RTW I did a few flights on non-ST partners in order to close a few gaps in SE Asia. On those flights (TG, VN) the alcohol was free. But it was also served from real bottles!

I'm not an economist (far from it - I dropped the only econ course I ever took after 2 weeks), but it would seem to me that the $5 cost for the drinks is somewhat significantly offset by several factors:

• The FAs must inventory everything and keep track of the money and count of minis, taking away from the time during which they could be nice to pax
• Someone somewhere has to review all those inventory sheets to make sure that the money matches the count
• Catering needs to deal with all the minis and get everything squared away every time
• Extra packaging (ie weight) involved in carrying around a bunch of minis instead of one real bottle

At $5 for 60ml of booze, I'm sure that the above doesn't really add up to lost money, but how close is it? Sure, if they got rid of all the accounting folks there'd be layoffs and people would lose their jobs and whatnot, and CO would actually have to convince the FAs to spend the time being nice to PAX rather than sitting in the jumpseats and reading or gossiping, but it is a nice thought.

Shortly after CO began charging for alcohol in international coach, I flew coach EWR-MXP. I had no idea that they had begun charging for alcohol and was surprised when the FA charged me $5 for a drink. When I suggested that the elimination of free drinks was the result of cost cutting, she stated that it was, in fact, due to security reasons - apparently, large numbers of passengers had been getting drunk and belligerent on CO international flights.

There must be a clause in the FA manual that instructs FA's to cite "security concerns" in response to any passenger's question, the answer to which (1) would embarrass CO; (2) the FA does not know; or (3) would upset the passenger in some manner.

AF a CO partner offers free drinks and also free champagne on their flights.

OOPS - deleted!