United Airlines is changing how flight attendants deal with drunk passengers onboard. Effective May 1, two flight attendants both have to share the judgment that the passenger is over the line. That will trigger collaboration with operations and the airport to handle removal of the customer from the aircraft, as first reported by Live and Let’s Fly.

Here’s how they’re describing the ‘huddle process’ in internal communications.

After boarding, if two flight attendants independently observe a customer exhibiting red light behavior(s) the Inflight team will call a mandatory huddle between Inflight, Flight Ops and Airport Operations to facilitate customer removal from the aircraft. This new huddle process is designed to handle situations where red light behaviors may not have been visible during boarding and a customer that appears to be intoxicated makes their way onto an aircraft.

The ‘red light behaviors’ United is talking about refer to their guidance on different stages of intoxication:

Green Light		Yellow Light		Red Light
Sociable		Reduced inhibitions		Moving in slow motion
Relaxed		Impaired judgment		Need time to respond
Happy		Talking or laughing loudly		Glassy-eyed
		Being overly friendly		Losing train of thought
		Arguing or baiting		Irrational statements
		Use of foul language		Spilling drinks
		Increasing alcohol use		Walking awkwardly
		Careless with money		Stumbling or falling
		Possible smell of alcohol		Unable to sit upright
				Slurred speech
				Possible smell of alcohol

This approach – requiring two flight attendants to come to this judgment about a passenger and then ‘huddle’ with other involved teams helps avoid situations where a single employee takes it on themselves to kick off a passenger without justification (the captain will tend to back up their crew, even when unwarranted, and their judgment is virtually unrenewable under FAA rules) and it should also force everyone involved to play their part rather than letting bad behavior slide.

It’s also similar to a move that American Airlines made in the fall, taking away the ability for a single crewmember to remove passengers for odor, attire or attitude based on their own judgment alone. That followed review of an incident where eight black men who did not know each other and were not traveling together were removed from an aircraft over a reported body odor issue.

Under American’s new rules, no flight attendant can act alone – two crewmembers need to work on resolution of an issue (and for issues unrelated to safety or security, those concerns need to be raised by a passenger before any action is taken).

After the David Dao passenger dragging incident in 2017, United stopped calling law enforcement on customers outside of safety and security issues, and started doing de-escalation training with flight attendants. This training turned out to be useful during the pandemic – United was much less likely than American to divert flights over mask non-compliance. De-escalation rather than passenger removal is a good thing.

This strikes me as another positive change along the same lines, although honestly some ‘yellow light’ behavior including foul language, arguing, and impaired judgment – as well as being ‘overly friendly’ – would probably make me think that the passenger ought to be removed from the aircraft prior to pushback, out of concern for how things could escalate once airborne.

Airlines don’t want disturbances. They don’t want conflict between passengers, or risks for their crew. And they certainly don’t want the costs of a diversion – from labor costs and fuel to having aircraft out of position, delaying downline flights, and misconnecting passengers. They also have regulatory obligations to police intoxicated passengers. This policy appears to meet those goals.

No doubt the policy won’t please everyone. For instance, the national head of the flight attendants union that represents United’s cabin crew has argued for a ban on inflight alcohol entirely. In the past I would never have bothered to drink any alcohol on United at all, but now that they’re serving decent wine in long haul business class a couple of glasses are something to look forward to.