There are some amazing places in the world to enjoy a cocktail. Some of my favorites that come to mind:

• The lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel at sunset looking out over the Pacific.

• The beach at the Park Hyatt Maldives, where Hyatt Gold Passport Diamonds are offered free cocktails and snacks at sunset.

  

• The club lounge at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong looking out over Victoria Harbor and the light show after dark from buildings across on Hong Kong Island.

  

Of all the special places to relax with a drink, I’ve never considered an airplane lavatory. One passenger on an easyJet flight from Bristol to Malaga disagrees.

American Airlines Boeing 787-8 Lavatory

After visiting duty free he downed a bottle of wine while waiting for the flight.

56 year old James Kelly, who also goes by Martin Johnson, started to drink the other bottle at his seat onboard the flight. A flight attendant asked him not to drink his own wine onboard, but he replied with the Shaggy Defense.

Since he wasn’t going to be able to keep drinking his own booze at his seat, he went to the lavatory.

The empty bottle of wine was found in the toilet bins.

‘The toilet was left unusable as somebody had urinated all over it.’

(Need I remind you to always wear shoes when visiting the lavatory?)

Pretty blitzed at this point, apparently, his seatmate called a flight attendant’s attention to his behavior, and when confronted he threatened to stab the pilot if he turned the aircraft around.

Of course he had no access to the cockpit, so he said “he would stab the air hostess and kill everyone on board the plane” if they returned to the UK. The plane then did, in fact, turn around.

Kelly, or Johnson, was arrested on arrival back at Bristol and released on bail. Shockingly he failed to appear for his hearing earlier this month and was found guilty in absentia — not of threatening the aircraft, but merely “of being drunk on an aircraft” which I suspect many readers have done. Often.

The man has been found, re-arrested, and will be sentenced next month.

It cannot be emphasized enough not to bring your own alcohol onboard to drink. That almost always ends badly unless you’re flying Alaska Airlines.

Unfortunately, with 3 billion people flying each year, some of them are awful or at least awful seatmates. And of course these stories almost always involve alcohol.