Are there any guidelines as to when to stop serving alcohol to a passenger?
 

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?

That many drinks would put most people under their seat in FC. But not someone who's addicted to alcohol and accustomed to drinking large quantities of alcohol on a fairly continual basis. They need to keep thier blood alcohol level elevated in order to operate "normally".

Alcohol servers are taught to determine whether a person is intoxicated through the drinker's behavior. Is the person staggering? Is his speech slurred? A young, inexperienced drinker will be extremely intoxicated with a BAC of .08 while there may be no indication at all that an addicted person's BAC is twice that.

Does anyone know what kind of trainings FA get for determining when to cut someone off?

1. I once watched two yahoos drink that much each on a 8AM flight from LIT-DFW ( :eek: ).

2. See this thread. :)

3. On a more serious note, I have seen a few pax cut off, and in one case, I got a guy cut off before departure (he was WAY beyond hammered, and I had personally witnessed him chug no fewer than 8 Bloody Marys in the lounge before departure...he ended up being seated next to me on a transcon). The F/As managed to find me the one other seat available on this full flight, and the guy passed out right after takeoff...the purser was quite grateful for the heads up on the guy's condition. IMHO he shouldn't have been allowed to fly, but who am I to say.)

4. I was "cut off" once on Continental Express as they have a limit of 4 drinks per pax (two double scotches during a 3+ hour ERJ flight doesn't strike me as excessive, but I guess their limit is reasonable).

That sounds like a preface I might use when I've been served too much shiraz.

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. :D

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. :eek:

How appropriate this is in TravelBuzz! :D

To respond to the question regarding training received: At NWA, the answer is absolutely none. As a matter of fact, the service aspect of the job is something that we barely even touch on in training. During the six week initial training class, one Saturday afternoon was set aside for service (and related) training. I suppose that assume we will receive the necessary skills on the job.

We are told to be cognizant of intoxicated passengers upon boarding, but that is about as far as it goes. It generally isn't a big problem. In my 10 years, I've never cut anyone off, and have been serving liquor for about double that length of time. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I just don't hear of it happening a whole lot.

To the OP- MSP-SEA is longer than three hours. You don't say the size of the passenger, this makes a world of difference. Also, since you don't drink, you probably arent' aware, but the wine glasses are tiny glasses. Really, I don't think an ice cube would fit inside of it. Besides all of this, I am curious-what caused you to focus on his beverage habits so intently? You say he was quiet, so that can't be it. Was he rude? Slovenly?

Or this one :eek:

I would believe it. I had the misfortune to be on a (connecting) MSP-LAS flight at the end of Sept. The passenger in the window seat arrived late (likely from the club from the alcoholic smell). He proceded to be served three mixed drinks and two glasses of red wine as he became increasingly noisy. I tried to ignore him but that was not possible as he wanted to 'chat'. My arm was black and blue from his poking - the FAs came by three times to ask him to be quiet - but that's not much help when he was already 'out of it'. It was a most unpleasant trip - and there was nowhere to move as the plane was absolutely full (heck, I would have taken the middle seat in the last row at one point). The FA was sympathetic but as he had already been served too much, there wasn't a whole lot she could do except hope he didn't create more of an uproar. As a cute side note, when I got off - a younger businessman caught up with me and said he hoped I could get a refund for that flight as it was pretty awful... wish he had offered to switch seats with me, maybe he could have shut the guy up.

I'm going to chime in and agree with nwaflygirl here. Half a day, if that, was spent on service. We are told not to serve anyone that 'appears to be intoxicated'. I've had to cut a few people off (We're talking had 10+ drinks) and we're handling it so well.

On a random note, and I don't know if this is rumour or not, but someone told me why AirTran no longer has a 2 comp drink limit in BC. The story goes that Joe Leonard was traveling, and asked for a third diet coke and rum, and the f/a politely told him that he was only allowed the two. Shortly after that the limit was compleatly lifted. ;)

It's a common problem that all airline crews face, but most often in the premium cabins where the booze is comped. Very seldom do we encounter the passenger that drinks to excess in the economy cabin unless they have brought their own, a violation of FAR's.

We have a little game we play in the "upgrade" cabins where, without referring to the paperwork, we guess the upgraded passengers, and the "real" paying folks. The standard we use, that is far more accurate than you would think, is observing alcoholic intake. There is a strong propensity for upgrades to knock back a few pre-dinner pops, then guzzle wine as if they were 18 again, as many apertifs as time permits, and then keep drinking until they are cut off or pass out.

What is amazing, is that these are people that hold responsible positions, and should be smart enough to understand that water and juice are the only beverages one should drink at all when flying. Having said that I know that scenerio is unrealistic. On the other hand the real pro's are the premium passengers who (international flights) get on, refuse the food, ask for water, and go to sleep immediately after take off. They understand what is important. I realize there are exceptions, but believe me when I say that my comments are more rule than exception.

The passenger was fairly large, and yes the wine glasses even to a non-drinker look tiny.....As to why I noticed....I am not really sure...maybe I was bored......and had finished with the SkyMall magazine early....

Pax in Exit Row
 

I was on flight one time and FA continued to serve female pax in exit row. I guess I saw pax drink about 6 beers, to point she was standing up, singing, starting taking her top off. I was across aisle. I tend to take the exit row stuff seriously and there was no way in the world she could "follow commands, issue instructions" in her state. I was disappointed in FA for continuing to serve someone they had delegated responsibilities to.

I have once seen a flight attendant cut off a passenger for intoxication (in Coach even! But it was on the way to Vegas). However, there is a period prior to being completely outwardly intoxicated where they are "talkative". So they may not be beligerant and a general problem to the rest of the cabin, but they are an annoyance to the person sitting next to them. I sat next to a guy recently who drank maybe 6 (I'm estimating) doubles of whiskey/Coke during a flight from DFW-SAN which is a bit over two hours of actual in-flight time. If his drink didn't taste strong enough, he would ring the call button and request a top-up. While he wasn't outwardly intoxicated, he was certainly an annoyance to me. He actually physically took my headphone out at one point when I was trying to ignore his repeated attempts at chatting. And it's not even just insisting on having a conversation; when one is a little drunk, they have a greater tendency to talk about inappropriate things! I don't need to hear about your divorce and what a jerk your ex is and I certainly don't need to hear about the strip clubs you prefer in San Diego. I'm a girl. (Sorry, minor vent there!)

Either way, I would support an upper limit based on the flight time. While it is true that everyone can safely consume varying amounts, limiting everyone to a reasonable amount based on flight time would likely alleviate some problems.

I've had one experience when a seatmate on a European flight started to make threats after I politely refused to partake in his brandy excess. Switched seats and the "gent" in question was escorted for a night at the airport police facilities by two officers at the gate. Declined to press charges as anonymity was not breached but I guess he would have been in deep trouble on a US flight.

Piedmont (remember them) got written up and fined by the FAA for over-serving pax after a serious runway overrun accident where two pax were so inebriated they didn't realize the plane had crashed and it took a couple of F/As (maybe assisted by able-bodied pax) to drag them from the plane during the evacuation. Word to the wise about getting trashed on your flights. If that plane had been on fire I doubt 4 people would be risking their own lives to drag a couple of drunks out of the flaming wreckage.

Yesterday flying from Chicago to Dulles the guy next to me was so smashed that when the FA came by and told him that he had to either put his bag all the way under the seat or in the overhead he just mumbled. Then when she came back 5 minutes later he still had not done it, so she just did it. Sad thing is that he didn't even realize it had been done till she told him that was what had happened. Scary part is that he was in the exit row and passed out. this could have been a flight safety issue.

Now that's BAD! Oh my gosh, that kind of stuff just never happens to me. I have to say that this was the FA's fault. There's quite a bit of time between beer 1 and stripping! Daddy's little girl, huh? Yikes!

Speaking of exit row drunks:

I was on a flight from ORD-AMS 6 years ago with my partner and our 3 kids (aged at time time 6-9 years old). We were 2 rows behind the exit row where 2 middle aged 'gentlemen' were having a little party. The FA kept bringing them handfulls of airline booze bottles, and soon a 20 something from a few rows up was sitting in the flight attendant seat opposite them.

They were obnoxiously loud all night but the FA kept serving them anyway. After another hour or so, the 20-something was friggin' LAP DANCING on them and there was up-the-skirt groping going on. I swear I saw the chick's hoo-hah...and I'm not kidding. The FA ignored it all and if my kids hadn't been sound asleep I would have freaked. As it was I didn't want to raise a stink although looking back I should have.

About two hours before landing, the FA brought the men a paper bag (about lunch bag sized)...they opened it and it was FULL of airline booze bottles. I had seen money change hands before that and clearly this was what it was for. Yep, in the exit row, and the life of myself and my children depended on not only them, but the F/A's making sure that able bodied people sat in those seats. And here the F/A was taking a bribe for a sack full of booze after these two were already trashed. I got the impression these guys were frequent flyers on the route and the F/A knew them, and so they were 'excused' from proper behaviour.

For me personally, I find that drinking any alcohol in flight makes my feet swell up to the size of an elephants. I'm sure it's partly the long flights themselves, but a glass of wine with dinner and I can barely put my shoes back on...and my feet HURT. So I just avoid it. Although I did have a nice First Class from MSP-BOI where I had three wines and must say it was the shortest flight ever...it made sitting next to the professional Amway salesgirl much more tolerable LOL.

I hate to say it, but I bet the rowdy bunch were employees of the airline.

That could be...but they didn't strike me as such. It probably would explain the treatment, though :D

.....

I would agree that you can drink as much as you would like if you are sitting by the window, so someone doesn't have to climb over your mouth breathing passed out carcass in case of emergency or if you are in the exit row.

[QUOTE=Scandalous] Now if something about my behavior bothers my fellow passengers that would be a different story and I'd knock it off just to be polite but if a guy downs 10 drinks and remains a perfect gentleman, I don't see why anyone should have a problem with it.

QUOTE]

Ahhh..but you can HANDLE your drinks, and seem to be considerate of your neighbors. A lot of people are polite ladies or gentlemen until the booze catches up with them, which can easily happen when someone has 9 drinks in less than three hours. Do you want to wait and see if the PAX next to you is a 10 drink gentlemen, or if that tenth drink turns him into a complete a$$, when it's too late and you have to sit next to him for another hour?

I do agree that behaviour should be the determining factor overall, but some common sense on both the PAX and FA should be exercised as well. Especially if the PAX is in the exit seat :(