The FAA has proposed a $165,000 fine against Alaska Airlines for allegedly allowing intoxicated passengers to board 11 flights between February 2024 and February 2025, in violation of federal rules.
According to Alaska Airlines,
We take seriously our responsibility to provide a safe and secure environment for our guests and employees. We participated fully with the FAA’s audit of our policies and practices as it relates to intoxicated guests on board our aircraft.
Since the FAA shared these concerns with us over a year ago, we made meaningful changes to ensure compliance with the FAA’s expectations – including enhanced training for all flight attendants and customer service agents. We respect the results of the FAA’s audit and are confident in the changes that have been in place for the last year to ensure our shared standards are being met
Flight attendant blog Paddle Your Own Kanoo suggests this could mean the end of first class predeparture beverages, because flight attendants are supposed to be “passenger behavior at the boarding door.”
And since customers come into contact with fewer employees – using kiosks or an app to check in, and with reduced staffing at the gate – there’s no one else left to make sure customers aren’t drunk when they got on the aircraft. That means they can’t be distracted by providing service while the aircraft boards.
Realistically, the ability of even the best flight attendant to monitor the behavior of every passenger boarding the plane, while also serving pre-departure beverages, is a stretch.
…There’s always been a tension amongst flight attendants to complete pre-departure beverage service, given all of their other responsibilities during boarding, but this new FAA crackdown could prove to be the authoritative reason that crew members skip this service.
I do not think this is correct, though.
- Alaska Airlines only just started offering full drink service in first class prior to departure this year. Predeparture beverages cannot reasonably be blamed for why flight attendants weren’t noticing intoxicated passengers.
- Alaska actually introduced full predeparture beverage service after learning the results of the FAA audit on intoxicated passengers. These were passengers were who inebriated prior to boarding Alaska flights – not customers becoming intoxicated because flight attendants overserved them.
- A much bigger issue is reduced staffing at gates, where agents have to help customers, scan boarding passes, and enforce bag rules and I’ve been writing for years that gate agents no longer have the bandwidth to pay attention to problem passengers.)
- A $165,000 fine is immaterial. And predeparture beverages are worth far more than that to an airline’s bottom line. Premium customer satisfaction with flight attendants is driven by predeparture beverages and using a customer’s name. A single point of net promoter score is worth $50 to $100 million to a major network airline.
Predeparture beverages are an easy scape goat predeparture beverages. The head of the largest flight attendants union doesn’t want airlines serving alcohol at all, though when carriers suspended it during the pandemic that meant passengers pregaming in the airport and boarding drunk more often.
But predeparture beverages are valuable to an airline to offer, so flight attendants will still be expected to serve them – even as too many ignore those instructions, knowing that a simple shrug and statement that they were worried about delaying the departure if they provided service will mean no consequences for failing to deliver on the service standard.
Another excuse for the lazy f/a’s
(not all of them are that) to not do their jobs.
Great. Now they can cluster in groups of four in the galleys whilst ignoring the boarding passengers and sneering at the newbie f/a stuck doing the “door.”
With electronic check-in for flights, how does an airline monitor if a passenger is intoxicated before boarding a flight? Perhaps, airlines should install breathalyzers at the jetbridge door to know if a person should be served a drink on board. Perhaps, scales should also be installed to know if a person needs to purchase two seats.
Hmm. The burning searing question is: Will I miss that plastic glass of Champagne Bollinger Special Cuvée when boarding 45 minutes prior to departure?
That’s bs. The problem are the morons getting plastered in airport bars and gate agents do not have the time to really check boarding passengers unless they’re falling down drink, loud, smell like a brewery of yaking on their shoes.
Maybe have a limit at airport bars of 2-3 drinks. The same people that spend over $100 at an airport bar never seem to have money for bail.
PFB matters to me (AA EP), to the degree that I will intentionally *NOT* fly AA if there is the same route/price in 1st on Delta. (Note: not United! They serve wine in tiny little glasses, lol).
And it is bizarre why some AA FA’s bust their butts and one person can handle 16 seats, yet on another flight there’s only 2 rows of 1st and I get the stink eye that they won’t serve until airborne because we are delayed… by 5 minutes? Yes, 5 minutes, and even then they are on their phones playing Candy Crush as the plane is boarded but door still open.
And when the flight is legit delayed? The best FA’s I’ve seen announce that they a) know that pre-flight beverage is important, and b) they are passing out water now but if you want something just ask. And so me and 3 other people do ask (and I always get a can of beer or seltzer… and the can only to make it quick!). Why can’t other FA’s be instructed to do that?
If I was the CEO, I would share these comments and reward the FA’s who do the best… these are *easy* fixes in my mind.
I’m on AA and UA up front mostly. I’m unfamiliar with “predeparture beverages”. What exactly are they?
Good luck with that. The only thing a limit will do is get the drunks to switch bars every couple of drinks.
NGL – when I saw a $165k fine for this, my immediate reaction was that AS might decide it’s cheaper to pay than bothering to fight it.
I’m also reminded of my cynical reaction to the Air France/Airbus case – the BBC said something about it hurting their reputations and all I could think was that nobody was/is going to care about a nearly-20-year-old case (especially on Airbus’s side given Boeing’s subsequent issues).
The kicker is that at a level like this, it would probably be financially rational for Alaska to just plan on paying fines rather than improving gate staffing (or even fighting cases like this).
Gary, your claim of “Alaska Airlines only just started offering full drink service in first class prior to departure this year.” is incorrect.
They offered PDB (pre departure beverages) for years but it was hit or miss. Some FAs were really good about it, some FAs were too busy gossiping in the forward galley or were glued to their dopamine injector (phone).
What Alaska did was bake PDB into the service requirements. For flights longer than X miles, etc.
The fine is meaningless. I suspect the FAA spent more that $165,000 on the investigation, and relative to the airline’s 2024 profit (skipping 2025 due to one time merger costs) the fine amounts to a 0.04% “hit” to the bottom line. If you personally cleared $100,000 per year after taxes last year, a $50 paking ticket is a bigger relative expense.
I was always “on my third drink before thr wheels of the plane left the ground:
@Denver Refugee — First time? @George Romey’s entire schtick is strawman solutions. Of course his idea here has a loophole you could drive an 18-wheeler through. Bah!
Ban all alcoholic beverages on the airplanes and in the terminals. That would solve a lot of problems.
@Ex-UA Plat – and turned it into full service not limited, my point is exactly that they leaned into predeparture beverages even after learning of the audit, this audit isn’t ending predeparture beverages
Water, coffee , juice and smoothies should be offer for predeparture.
Two alcoholic drinks with dinner max . Regardless of the length of the flight .
@jns — So, you want to bring back Prohibition? Sounds like what you want already exists on airlines like Egyptair, Saudia, etc.
It is the airport bars that is the problem Have he bars scan the tickets to track the number of drinks.
And do not tell me they can not do it. They do it with Smokes.
When a passenger checks in at an Alaska Airlines airport kiosk, surprise them with the question: “Have you had more cocktails than flight delays today? Check YES or NO.”
I think all airports and airlines ought to go dry; that is, no alcoholic beverages anywhere at airports or for inflight service.
Hm.
“Alaska Airlines only just started offering full drink service in first class prior to departure this year.”
“my point is exactly that they leaned into predeparture beverages”
Well, this is hardly the case anymore. AS has served two PDBs in 40 flights this year. Meanwhile, AA has served 25 PDBs in 25 flights.
@ jns @Eric – None of it would ever work. Determined drunks will (a.) simply get plastered before coming to the airport, and perhaps even in the airport parking lot, and (b.) will also figure out a way to sneak and consume alcohol on board. Never underestimate the ability of a highly motivated alcoholic to imbibe.