A 20-year United Airlines flight attendant has been fined after boozing so much on a flight from San Francisco to London on October 17 that she had to be taken to the hospital on arrival.
During the overnight flight, the 56-year old crewmember reportedly consumed multiple miniature bottles of vodka that she’d brought onboard herself (rather than stealing from the galley) and was “ten times over” the UK legal limit for aviation personnel.
Paramedics boarded the aircraft at Heathrow and found her with a smell of alcohol on her breath and low blood pressure. A blood test came back at a 0.216, over two and a half times the legal driving limit and more than 10 times the applicable 0.002 BAC she’d have been allowed.
- The flight attendant pleaded guilty to performing an aviation function while over the alcohol limit.
- Although the maximum penalty could include a prison sentence of up to two years, she received just a financial penalty (£1,461, plus a £584 victim surcharge and £85 in court costs) considerating that the flight landed safely without disruption.
She has resigned from her job at United Airlines. Ironically, United is the only U.S. airline that allows flight attendants to drink while on duty (though only when deadheading, and not expecting to work any more that day).
It’s usually a Japan Airlines pilot or, at least, a pilot. Prior to the pandemic United started enforcing ’12 hours bottle to throttle’ instead of 8.
Flight attendant drinking actually seems less common, or at least coverage of their getting caught is less common, though a United Express cabin crewmember got caught.
Hey @united, our flight attendant appears to be quite drunk on this from from ORD to SBN. She is slurring her speech (she couldn’t make it through the security announcement), couldn’t walk straight/was bumping into everyone in the aisle, and kept dropping things.
— Aaron Scherb (@aaronscherb) August 2, 2019
Other London flights with impaired flight attendants include the British Airways crewmember who stripped naked and danced in business class following a lavatory cocaine binge. And then there was the BA crew that fabricated a mugging to cover up a wild night in Rio.
It’s much harder to fire drunk flight attendants in Australia, where even stealing alcohol from galley carts and drinking it can win big payouts from an employment tribunal and dismissal after the equivalent of 14 drinks has a viale appeal if the flight attendant was ‘tempted by the bar’s special offer on alcohol’. Mere drinking before duty Down Under results in the government ordering that you get rehired.
(HT: Paddle Your Own Kanoo)
@1990 – Is being really stupid sort of like being drunk all the time? I’m curious to know.
20 is pretty young. Kinda sad.
Gary, using this outlier incident as a trojan horse to attack organized labor is pretty low.
20 or 56 yo? lazy writing
@1990 ’20 is pretty young. Kinda sad.’
The 20-year veteran FA is 56, according to the article.
‘Gary, using this outlier incident as a trojan horse to attack organized labor is pretty low.’
Care to rethink and reframe this?
I did not say 20 year old, I said she was a United flight attendant for 20(-plus) years.
The word union does not appear in the post.
why would a veteran crew member almost ready for retirement risk drinking on the job like this. There is more to the story we don’t know.
@Tony @1990 ’20 or 56 yo? lazy writing’
realized your lazy reading, did you?
Alcoholism is a disease. And not a fun one from my own personal experience. Period.