British Airways Crew’s Barbados Drinking Bender Cancels Flight, Passengers Owed $165,000

British Airways flight 254 from Barbados to London Heathrow was cancelled on Sunday, July 5, 2026, after members of the crew reportedly got heavily drunk at the all-inclusive resort where they had been spending their layover. Four flight attendants have been suspended.

The airline flew the plane back to London without passengers on board as BA9156, since they lacked the minimum continguent of cabin crew that are legally required to provide passenger service, and because BA needed the aircraft to operate its next flight.

The crew had been laying over in Barbados after operating British Airways flight 255 from Heathrow to Bridgetown, Barbados on board a Boeing 777-200ER. During their time at the hotel,

• Several cabin crew members drank vodka and beer.
  
• One female flight attendant apparently vomited in the bar.
  
• One male flight attendant is said to have collapsed, where he had to be helped back to his room.
• Guests complained about the ruckus, and one flight attendant reportedly responded defiantly: “We’re British Airways crew, what of it?”

According to British Airways,

We expect the highest standards of our crew, and are urgently investigating this matter.

The aircraft, G-VIIA, was delivered in March 1997, and I believe is the oldest aircraft in the British Airways fleet. It has 237 seats, so passengers would have been entitled to UK261 compensation of GBP520 apiece or $164,869 plus hotel accommodations and meals. BA will likely pay out less than this because not everyone onboard will know to make a claim, or to follow up on the claim when British Airways stalls.

British Airways crew are special! A British Airways pilot snorted cocaine off a topless woman before trying to fly Johannesburg–London, and texted and bragged about their drug-fueled layover. They had to be fired. In another case, crew covered up heavy drinking and drug use on a Rio layover with a fabricated story of a mugging.

An entire BA crew was nearly kicked out of a Maldives resort after drunken fighting. While one BA flight attendant passed out drunk on the beach, and another ran naked around breakfast. Also in a layover hotel, cabin crew played naked spin the bottle, with a dare to run naked down the hallway knocking on guest doors. They allegedly drank alcohol taken from the aircraft.

This came after British Airways had actually specifically warned crew to stop running naked in hotels! That warning came after a pilot tried to steal fish from a lobby pond.

(HT: Paddle Your Own Kanoo)