I was curious so I googled it, and this came up:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip...-bkk-sq-f.html

Unlike most champagnes Dom Perignon isn't non-vintage. These days a bottle of a cheaper vintage, such as 2012, retails for around $240 plus tax. The 1999 vintage he was drinking back in 2010 wouldn't have been much less in PPP. Same for the 2000.

As he says, in those dollars, that's well over a grand of champagne. But it's over the course of an entire day, and it sounds like he is a happy customer for life and the crew had a great time too.

-what if the only possible seats to move to also have adjacent seats occupied by other humans?
-what if the perpetrator ignores the request to move?

Japan Airlines long haul ex-TYO (not all flights at all times). I think the current price between Asia and North America is 80k miles, recently bumped up from 67.5k.

Right - the flight crew's goal is NOT to make matters worse. Moving the offending passenger to a more crowded section of the plane doesn't make it better. Even the act of moving him might have set him off. Maybe the OP thinks because mom was in PP seat, people in coach should suffer him, not her. No - that's not the way it works. There are multiple factors to consider. Pleasing the mom is not the only one. Unfortunately, the best solution at the time was to put space between the mom and the offender w/o making things worse for even more people - that meant moving the mom.

I guess she didn't move back, therefore he and his behavior really weren't as repulsive to her as a coach seat :) That probably summarizes it.

I am totally understand as I experienced once before too. I don’t know how terrible is your situation and how bad is the company’s response, I do think complain letter is a must! At least let them know the seriousness and avoid next time.

Maybe some evidence is needed for the complain letter? Like photos and recoding. Just let them know how worse is the situation.

I enjoy 🥃 as much as the next person.

But If somebody spills once they should be cut off. Zero tolerance. There is no excuse. Alcohol is not essential to the travel experience no matter what class of service. I’ve taken 1000s of flights and never spilled. Even with turbulence.

definitely report to DOT. Most air rage incidents are caused by overserving drunks. Good to send the message to crews to be conservative.

First result when I Googled "alcohol at altitude" was https://www.cowanlawfirm.com/article...-high-altitude which says "A study conducted by American psychologist R. A. McFarland in the 1930s concluded, with minimal research, that alcohol does have a more powerful effect on the body at higher elevations. .... Recent studies have shown, however, that alcohol, when consumed at altitude, does not affect the body any differently than it would at sea level. The Federal Aviation Administration conducted a series of experiments in which they observed inebriated individuals at higher altitudes and below sea level. They concluded that there is no correlation between elevation and alcohol potency."

So if we're going to have a thread where every other post cites an FAA regulation, maybe we should trust the FAA on this.

Here's an actual FAA study from 1988: https://www.tc.faa.gov/its/worldpac/techrpt/AM88-2.pdf

I'd say something like 3/5 of my seat-mates lose whatever they have on the middle drink tray on the take-off roll.

The drinks I've spilled have been almost entirely on 737s, even though I've flown multiples more 320s, due to the smaller area between the seats. It's been under 5 total, but these were the ones where I made contact with the glass causing it to spill. Always while standing up from my seat - not when I was trying to make contact with the glass. I think most were water. Hard to cut me off from water.

Then there was the one time where the descent angle sent my glass slowly toward the edge of the tray, then right off, shattering the glass on the bulkhead. I was busy on my laptop and had no idea what was going on until I heard it break.

Or the time my plastic cup was sitting on my tray table, we hit a rather large bump in a small aircraft, the cup went two feet in the air, and landed in my lap.

I've taken 1000 flights and never had a completely inebriated seatmate to the extent discussed in this thread, but I would definitely not be willing to say it doesn't happen.

On Sfo>pdx in 2018 or so, my seat neighbor had at least 4 coffee & baileys. Morning flight. 80 minute flight? I bet he had a car at pdx as well lol

Nope - you did what you needed to do to get the result. That's not being a jerk, even a little bit. Assertive is good.

Maybe almost a decade ago — 2016 or 2017? — flying from Tokyo to LAX on UA, I was moved away from a drunk man who was repeatedly harassing me with lewd comments, kept trying to touch me etc. When I brought it up discreetly to a flight attendant when the guy was in the bathroom, they moved me immediately to an empty row in economy plus. This was about 1/3 of the way through the flight. I was a female in my 20s (with a bit of a baby face at the time) traveling solo, so that might have made it more urgent for them.

I am sorry to hear what happened to you and delighted that the flight attendants acted as they did.

Baileys is only 34 proof. 4 Baileys is about the equivalent of 1.5 shots of Woodford Reserve (90 proof).

To be fair, 10 drinks in ~9 hours is pretty close to a drink an hour which is the average rate for the body to metabolize the alcohol.

Not when you start with 4 drinks in the lounge and 4 more before dinner onboard. After that it doesn't matter that your body will metabolize it by the time you land, you are still unacceptably drunk half the flight