What you should know about bringing liquor on your next flight

Imagine this scenario… You are the flight attendant working a red eye flight from Seattle to Detroit. All your passengers board the flight and nothing seems out of the ordinary. You take off, complete beverage service, and retreat back to the galley to read your book. All 200 passengers are quiet. When it’s your turn to do a security check, you make your way down the aisle and notice a slight commotion at row 17. When you approach the row, 17A is slurring his words, yelling obscenities, and is punching the seat in front of him.

What the hell happened?

This is your section of the airplane and you never served this passenger any alcohol. He asked for a cup of ice and a ginger ale. That’s it.

 

But you soon find out that this passenger brought his own liquor minis onto the airplane and downed four of them before you’ve reached Montana air space.

I’ve been seeing more and more passengers bring their own alcohol onto flights lately. I am here to tell you that it’s acceptable on some airlines* for you to bring your own alcoholic beverages on the airplane but there are some rules you must follow.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lays it out in black and white under 14 CFR 121.575:

(a) No person may drink any alcoholic beverage aboard an aircraft unless the certificate holder operating the aircraft has served that beverage to him.

What that means is… you can bring your own alcohol (within the limitations of what the FAA states you can carry with you on the airplane) but you must tell the flight attendant that you have it and WE must pour it for you. Simple, right?

The reason is we need to know how much alcohol each passenger ingests on the airplane. If we don’t then we have scenarios like the one above on the airplane. We don’t want that. As the flight attendant, I need to know exactly how many drinks you’ve had while inflight. If I don’t then I’m left standing there scratching my head wondering how you got so drunk when I haven’t served you any alcoholic.

The perfect scenario conversation between a passenger and flight attendant might go something like this:

Passenger in 17A, “Hi. I have four Jack Daniels minis that I brought on with me. Can I drink them?”

Me, “Yes. But I have to serve the alcohol bottles to you. Give the minis to me and when you order a drink I will serve them to you.”

17A, “Cool. That seems reasonable. Thank you for being so kind.”

Me, “You are welcome. Thank you for not being a dick and trying to hide the alcohol.”

But let’s be honest, it never happens like that. Most passengers don’t know this rule and probably are afraid to ask about the alcohol for fear the answer will be no. Or maybe they do know this rule but don’t want the flight attendant serving them their own alcohol. I have no clue. I stopped trying to figure out airline passengers back in 2010.

Besides being trained in CPR, birth delivery, and evacuating an airplane in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, we are also bartenders. You can’t come into our work space and just drink without our knowledge. Think of it like this, some restaurants allow you to bring your own bottle of wine into the restaurant but they serve you the bottle. Same thing. But they charge you a corkage fee. We don’t.

We always find out when you’re serving yourself your own alcohol. We find out everything. We’re like your mother and you are like our teenager sons. The flight attendant working your flight goes through collecting trash and you hand them two mini bottles that the airline doesn’t even sell. Then all kinds of questions come up: How many drinks have they already had? How many more minis do they have? How drunk were they when they came onto the airplane? Is this passenger going to get crazy?

Things like that.

Bottom line, we can not have intoxicated passengers on the airplane. And if you are downing alcohol without the knowledge of the flight attendant bad things might happen. We don’t like bad things. We’re already dealing with the lady who’s mad because her seat won’t recline and the dog who just shit all over the front row – we don’t want to deal with your intoxication.

In a perfect world people would follow the rules and tell their flight attendants they brought a few minis to enjoy on the flight. But this isn’t a perfect world. I find myself educating passengers on a weekly basis about alcohol as they hand me a Corona bottle halfway through the flight.

 

Some simple rules to follow:

1. Tell the flight attendant you have your own alcohol that you’d like to drink during the flight

2. Let the flight attendant hold the alcohol in the galley

3. Order your drinks as you’d normally do but remember – if we think you’ve had too much we can refuse to administer you ANY alcohol – including what you brought on the flight yourself

4. Collect any unused alcohol before landing but don’t drink it. Don’t be that guy. You’ve done so well.

5. Don’t be a dick to the flight attendant

6. Seriously, that’s an important one, DON’T BE A DICK ABOUT ALCOHOL

*Prior to bringing your own liquor on the flight check with the airlines policies. Some airlines allow this and some do not. This post is written in regards to airlines that allow the practice of passengers bringing on their own liquor and the flight attendants dispensing it.

- See more at: http://www.flightattendantjoe.com/2016/05/what-you-should-know-about-bringing-liquor-on-your-next-flight/#sthash.AMq3cvOi.dpuf