‘It’s Not the Vodka Tonic Button’: Flight Attendant Union Boss Says Don’t Press It—Even If You’re Thirsty On A Six-Hour Flight

You’re stuck in your middle seat and thirsty on board a six hour flight. What do you do? Should you have just bought an overpriced bottle of water inside the terminal, since you can’t bring one from home through security? Or maybe brought an empty one and filled it at a filling station that never gets filtered or cleaned once past the checkpoint?

Assume you didn’t do that and are relying on the airline to meet your basic needs inflight – or maybe you’re a first class passenger and just want a cocktail? – when is it actually acceptable to press the flight attendant call button?

• Which airline you fly matters. It’s fine with an Asian or Middle Eastern carrier, while U.S.-based flight attendants often hate it.
  
• It matters which phase of flight you’re in. During taxi, takeoff and landing cabin crew can’t fulfill drink requests. They’re busy during boarding, or might miss you while performing meal service.
  
• It matters what class of service you’re in. Though business class passengers are sometimes treated shabbily, they’re more likely to have a request honored than someone in coach.

This describes how to predict the response a flight attendant will give you. It doesn’t really answer whether pressing the call button is the right thing to do or not. In other words, if you’re met with disdain is it because you were in the wrong for pressing it, or was the flight attendant wrong to treat you that way?

The Washington Post purported to offer “The 52 Definitive Rules of Flying” as an air travel etiquette guide. While mostly on the nose, they offer that “the flight attendant button is not a vodka tonic button.”

Consider it the 911 call of the sky — something to use in case of emergency, not in case of thirst to quench.

I once wrote about a Delta Air Lines flight attendant who warned a passenger “DON’T TOUCH THAT BUTTON AGAIN” after they’d used it to request a drink.

The head of the largest flight attendants union, Sara Nelson, says you should never press the flight attendant call button for a drink, and even tried to get the government to ban alcohol on planes which would reduce the amount of service her members would have to provide. (She also tried to get the federal government to make leisure travel illegal during the pandemic.)

This is 100% wrong.

• The alternative to pressing the call button, to let a flight attendant know you want a drink, is to go to the galley. But flight attendants don’t want a steady stream of passengers heading to the galley and blocking the aisles, and airlines often announce not to congregate in the galley.

• In Ms. Nelson’s world, passengers simply wouldn’t hydrate. Cabin crew wouldn’t provide service. And you’d sit down and shut up about it.

• The call button exists, what does she think it is for? She says it is so individual passengers can press it to identify themselves when called upon to do so by a crewmember. And if you do use it for something like a glass of water, you’d darned well better have a compelling moral justification (“It may be that you’re a mother, and you have an infant in your arms, and you need some help”).

• However airlines themselves say otherwise. For instance Emirates flight attendants have been reminded not to ignore the passenger call button. According to that airline it’s expressly not the ‘911 of the sky’. In fact, they monitor response times to customer requests.

• It is not called an ’emergency button’ it is a call button, and if you need a drink the best way to ask for one is to let a crewmember know you need one.

Flight attendants don’t ‘just’ provide drinks. Airlines for the most part have them on board because they are required to by the FAA, since they’re assigned safety duties. (Although especially for international flights, airlines often staff cabin crew beyond the required minimums, in order to provide better service.) However flight attendants aren’t performing safety duties for most of the flight on most flights, and can ignore the call button when there are more pressing matters.

So ultimately the flight attendant call button is for… calling the attention of a flight attendant. That means, if you need a drink, ask. But understand that they may make you wait, and if you’re on Spirit they may make you pay. Your crewmember may also make you wait out of spite, because you pressed the call button.